A Romantic Rationalist

Citing Sources

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:57:15 PDT

In my most recent post introducing my on-going series on the 2012 elections, I went on at some length about “doing one's homework.” I hold myself to that same standard‒with at least some consistency, I hope. A reader might have noticed that I cite my sources in many, if not most, of my posts and thought I should give a brief account of my thinking regarding citation styles. As an undergraduate I took upper-level classes from many different disciplines: physics, engineering, geology, biology, and political science...to name a few. The default citation format I cut my teeth on was the venerable Modern Language Association(MLA) style. This makes sense when one considers that most undergrad's are introduced to writing “scholarly” papers not within their own major, but in courses taught by faculty from the English department.

One of the things I like about the MLA style is that it is set up to handle a very wide range of sources, from peer-reviewed journals to on-line videos of scientific symposia and just about everything in-between. Like many students, I used a bibliographic citation software package, specifically, EndNote. However, EndNote is very expensive and I was delighted when I learned of Zotero, a free, open-source alternative to EndNote and its pricey competitors.

For a professor grading a stack of papers written by undergrads, the MLA style is nearly ideal because the in-text citations are obvious (or very "in-your-face," depending on one's mood) and are easy to reconcile with the list of “works cited” at the end of the paper. I get that. Though I am no longer a student, I still want to show that I have done my homework in what I write, but the very thing that makes MLA great for professors grading papers, the obviousness of the in-text citations, makes a MLA formatted paper hard to read if the writer actually wants someone that is not an English professor to read it because the effect is visually quite jarring.

After some playing around with the Citation Style Language (CSL) used by Zotero, I have found that I really like the in-text citation format used by the British journal Nature. It consists of a simple, unobtrusive, superscript within the text which corresponds to the entry in the references at the end of the paper. However, the Naturestyle is not set up to handle nearly the same diversity of sources that MLA is, so I have had to tweak it a bit to make it work. It is still very much a work in progress and so if a reader cannot easily place the citation style I use, now they know why.

2012-The Very Long Year-Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:47:43 PDT

Election years in the United States typically feel long, and 2012 is shaping up to be a very long election year. Indeed, one could even say it began as soon as the last polls closed on November 4^th, 2008. This post was originally intended to be a one-off, however, like so many other posts, as I wrote it, I was constantly saying to myself "If I cover this fact or concept here, I also need to mention that supporting (or contrasting) bit from over there"‒and the whole thing snowballed from there. The original impetus for the stand-alone piece was the blow-up over Rush Limbaugh's juvenile, schoolyard bully-style attacks on the character of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke following her testimony before Democratic members of a House sub-committee. The subject of her testimony was contraception availability and the impact it has on women's reproductive health. Not surprisingly, as I noted above, instead of challenging the factual claims made in Ms. Fluke's testimony, something far beyond the pathetically limited scope of Limbaugh's intellect (not to mention that of his target demographic), the best he could do was resort to name-calling. The specifics of Ms. Fluke's testimony, Limbaugh's contemptible comments and those of his Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA)ⁱsheep, will be covered in a later post.

In thispost, I throw down the gauntlet and lay out my ground rules for any discussion or debate that purports to deal with the world around us. The gloves are off. I am through coddling social, religious, and political conservatives (and when I encounter people on the left that are equally ignorant, I will be just as intellectually brutal with them too). Let this be fair warning‒from now until I revert back to precisely the same the state of non-being I was in (suffering no discernible harm by the way) for the entire 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to just prior to my birth‒I will no longer remain silent when confronted by confident assertions made by people who have failed to do their homework. I always take considerable care in fact checking myself, in what I write and in my every day conversations with others. As a culture, we have little sympathy (for the most part) for a kid that blows off their homework in favor of playing video games and then embarrasses the hell out of themselves the next day in class when they try to bluff their way through a classroom discussion of the assigned material. Most grown-ups would consider such embarrassment their "just deserts" that would (hopefully) be a powerful motivator not to get caught with their intellectual pants around their ankles in the future, a valuable lesson in the journey toward maturity.

Paradoxically, upon reaching what can be loosely called "adulthood," the desire to avoid publicly embarrassing oneself or look like an ignoramus seems to undergo a curious inversion in some individuals. In the classrooms of our childhood and adolescence, those that pretended to know things they clearly did not were soon exposed, providing ample reasons to get our facts straight, have our ducks in a row, to dot our i's, cross our t's, and to do our homework.One would think that as adults, we would hold ourselves and others to a higher, not lower, standard of intellectual honesty than we hold children. As adults, we would certainly not want physicians that bluffed their way through medical school treating our loved ones or ourselves. Nor would we want auto mechanics working on our cars that were given passing marks for their ASE certifications and training merely because their instructors felt sorry for them. Lawyers that have not done their homework that dare appear in front of a judge are ruthlessly criticized and will have few clients and should we, as private citizens, ever find ourselves in a courtroom, whether civil or criminal, we have every right to demand that the attorney representing us has done their homework.

If our child were suffering from an unknown illness, we would demand that the treating physician leave no stone unturned or allow no assumption to go unquestioned in identifying the malady and how to treat it. In our daily lives however, when it comes to politics, social policy, etc., whether in conversations with family, friends, co-workers, or in the mass media, it is not the person that is, not to put a too fine a point on it, “talking out their ass” that is shamed and embarrassed, but rather it is the one that dares to call them on it that is vilified. By way of comparison, if you enter into a conversation with someone that has a mania for theminutiae of some subject or activity, whether it be Star Trek or NASCAR, they will soon know whether you are merely a dabbling dilettante or if you "know your stuff." If they determine that you are a mere pretender, few will hesitate to dismiss you as a "wannabe" or its equivalent.

As citizens in a democracy, one of our most consequential acts is going to the polls. The intellectual effort, the due diligence, the conscientiousness with which we educate ourselves concerning the facts of the issues before deciding who or what to vote for, are every bit as essential to the continued health of our representative democratic republic as the rigorous studies of a physician or surgeon are to the health of their patients. Paradoxically, our political discourse, at the level of individuals and in society as a whole, is rife with examples of people holding opinions that have no basis in actualfacts. In the words of a 19^thcentury humoristⁱⁱ, "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." In my office, there is an older co-worker that has one of those 8 ½ by 11 inch line drawings, like countless others in circulation in offices throughout the country when photocopying and fax machines were still a novelty. The picture depicts the face of an "old lady" holding a coffee mug, telling folks "Don't believe everything you think." I think that little "poster" should be placed outside every voting booth in the country. As Altemeyer observed in The Authoritarians², based on subject responses to other survey instruments, he was able to predict that certain people will reliably fail a simple test of inductive reasoning. What the results showed is that as long as those that actually failed the test thought the conclusionwas true, they were utterly oblivious to the faulty reasoning used to arrive at the conclusion (or they thought it did not matter). This is why many mathematics teachers require their students to show their work and why some give partial credit‒because the point is to learn the complex steps involved in solving certain kinds of math problems. Once a student has the steps down, then they can concentrate on the silly mistakes we all make, like forgetting a negative sign or some such. The importance of being able make a logically consistent argument, and, not co-incidentally, know what a poorly constructed argument looks like, are a primary reason that Euclidean geometry is still taught in high schools. It may sound a bit lame or lacking in a certain "rigor," but a university I once attended even allowed students to take a course in formal logic to satisfy a core math requirement–because the goal was to teach logical thinking.

As a relatively uncontroversial (hopefully) example that illustrates the interplay between opinions and facts, and which I will later apply to more controversial ideas, is from the history of the Second World War. There have been those that maintain that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was in possession of what we would today call "actionable intelligence" of an impending attack on U.S. forces in the Pacific. In one sense, it did not require a genius to predict that the United States cutting off exports to a resource-poor and ruthlessly expansionist Japan would not go over well and that open conflict would be the likely result. Given that the principals involved are now dead, as a practical exercise it would hard to interrogate those that were in a position to know. Regardless of how "impractical" it may be to ascertain, 70 years after the fact, who in FDR's administration knew what, if anything, and when, or if, they knew it. The only thing that, even in principle, could ever possibly decide the matter would be evidence. How one feels about the New Deal, the Lend Lease program, FDR, any other aspect of the politics of the time, is irrelevant.

The most contentious and divisive topics in the areas of public policy arise largely because of differing ideas of the realpurpose of laws and government institutions in a society. Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWAs) are able to get away with many of the things they do in setting public policy because, as individuals and as a group, their feet are seldom held to the fire and pressed for their true motivations for supporting the policies they do. When I say "holding their feet to the fire" I mean something like the climatic scene in A Few Good Men³, where Lt. Kaffee relentlessly presses the self-righteous Col. Jessup until he tells the truth‒that he ordered the "Code Red," convinced the whole while that he had done nothing wrong.

The idea of "doing one's homework" when forming our beliefs and opinions is part of the more general (and very rare) virtue of intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty not only requires that we be willing to defend our opinions and beliefs, but that we are also obliged to honestly acknowledge the motivations and assumptions underlying them. It seems that on some level, RWAs seem to instinctively know that to come right out and say the actual reasons why they take the positions they do regarding certain subjects will expose them to public ridicule. Aside from the ravings of anti-vaccination nut-jobs, most folks, RWA's included, recognize that promoting public health through vaccination programs, fluoridation of water, etc., is a legitimate area of concern for governments‒until the public health concern in question has any connection, however tenuous or remote, to sex. In developed, liberal democracies throughout the world, it is generally acknowledged that unwanted teenage pregnancies and the unchecked spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have significant economic, social, and public health costs and are no less a legitimate public health concern than preventing flu pandemics. There would be near-universal outrage if a government were to mandate the use of a particular treatment for a specific disease for any other reason than that it actually works.

If a society, or a government that claims to act in the name of its citizens, is serious about reducing the human suffering, misery, and deaths caused by smallpox, the only legitimate criteria is: do the vaccines in question actually work as advertised? If anyone were to propose an alternative, we would require that the alternative is more effective, period. Before spending tax dollars on an ad campaign to educate consumers to properly handle and cook meat in an effort to reduce food-borne illnesses, we would demand that the precautions advocated are actually effective. Proposed solutions to societal ills that seem to have little to do with whether or not the solutions in question are actually effective in fixing or mitigating the problem, should set off all sorts of alarms in the minds of all intelligent, thoughtful, and honest human beings. In my next essay, I will expose the moral pretensions of RWAs by looking at one of the hot button issues of the upcoming election

ⁱDr. Robert Altemeyer has been researching the authoritarian personality since the mid-1960's. When the horrors of Hitler's "Final Solution" started to dawn on the rest of humanity, many sought to understand how people‒otherwise decent, normal, educated folks‒can so totally surrender themselves to a charismatic leader with a brutal ideology. Novelists like George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut explored these questions through their fiction. While some “social scientists” indulged in various forms of moral relativism (I will spare the reader a rant against “post modernism”) other social scientists felt it essential to understand what combination of individual and societal factors make it possible for the citizens in a modern nation, solidly a part of the "Western Tradition," to go along with the Holocaust, indifferent to the enormity of what was done.

Serious social scientists like Phillip Zimbardo (The Stanford Prison Experiment) and Stanley Milgram (The Milgram Experiment) explored situations and contexts in which people surrender to “authorities” and can be goaded to commit moral atrocities they would not if left to their own volition. Altemeyer 's contribution was in identifying two distinctive types of “authoritarian” personalities. Obviously there were “Authoritarian leaders,” e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco (Spain)‒they are easy to spot. All by themselves they are merely a frustrated demagogue, to be dangerous, they need followers‒lots of them. This was why much of the research into the "authoritarian personality" following the Second World War focused on authoritarian followers.

In Altemeyer's research, he defines "Right-Wing Authoritarians" to be (in part) those that submit to established authorities and rigidly adhere to conventional ways. "Left-Wing Authoritarians" would be those that submit to those that would overthrow the established, traditional authorities‒think 1960's hippie radicals‒a rare breed in the United States today. Keep in mind that while on the conventional "left-right" political spectrum, Soviet or Chinese-style Communism (note the capitalization‒when you see it I wish to make a distinction between socialism/communism and a specific instantiation of it the same way that we would describe the United States as being a democratic republic) is deemed to be the far left end of the spectrum, but for someone living under such a system, that Communism is the established authority. A zealous supporter of conventional ways and the "party line," whether in the United States or in Soviet Russia, would be a Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) follower.

ⁱⁱAmong late 19th century American humorists, Mark Twain (1835-1910) is the most famous. However, on the quotation sites I consulted, no instances attributing the quote to Twain provided a title of the containing work. Geoff Colvin in this book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, quotes a contemporary of Twain's, Josh Billings (his real name was Henry W. Shaw, 1818-1885) as: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." Elsewhere, Billings is quoted as (at: http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=3945&page=4): "It ain't what folks know that's the problem, it's what they know that ain't so."

The 1876 book, The Complete Works of Josh Billings, p. 286 contains the following quote: "I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so."[sic] The careful citing of sources seen today was not all that common in the 19^th century‒except perhaps in scientific circles. Attempts to correct the "loose" spelling (by modern standards, not for the times it was composed) of Billings' phrasing neatly accounts for the many variations in phrasing of the sentiment expressed as later writers “cleaned up” Billings' very astute observation to make it less jarring to more modern readers.

References

1. Colvin, G. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. (Penguin: 2010).

2. Altemeyer, B. The Authoritarians. (2006). at <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/>

3. Reiner, R. A Few Good Men. Film. (1992).

An Epiphany or Just Kidding Myself?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:18:50 PST

I just got home (late on Dec. 2) from a five-day conference of Veteran's Employment Representatives on the new materials for the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) for service members about to leave the military and I wanted to get my thoughts out there with little polishing. The conference, my "classmates," and especially the "trainer," Dr. Beverly Hyman were the best part of the experience. Dr. Hyman and her husband are the co-authors of the book, How to Know If It's Time to Go: A 10-Step Reality Test for Your Marriage–which I will be buying and reading–and I have been divorced almost ten years now.

I have written before of my ADD/ADHD and anyone that knows me would not be surprised that I was that annoying student that was always raising their hand to contribute something to the discussion. There were times I had to force myself to remain still and let others have a chance. It is not (I hope) that I am really that self-absorbed, it is just that, despite my ADD/ADHD, or (here comes the possible epiphany part) because of it, I seem to have a knack for finding connections, metaphors, or analogies between seemingly dissimilar ideas or concepts. One of the diagnostic features of ADD/ADHD is a deficit in "working memory" and that is me to a "T." Might it be that my deficit in working memory forces me, and perhaps others with ADD/ADHD, to draw on their long term memories, or to use a computer metaphor, to compensate for not having enough RAM (where programs and data are stored while they are being used, and which is cleared when the computer is powered down) by having a fast and very well indexed "hard drive" (long term memory) that is able to make rapid connections to things it already knows?

Jet fighters are designed in such a way that, aerodynamically, they are just on the verge of being uncontrollable. Key to the survival of military jets in air-to-air combat is their maneuverability, whereas predictability and stability are what you want in a commercial or military that carries people or other cargo. Perhaps those with a good working memory are able to stay focused and "on task," like a well-designed passenger aircraft. Combat aircraft on the other hand are too difficult for a human to control and it is only the ability of computers to make tiny millisecond by millisecond adjustments to the flight controls that they are stable at all, but when they do need to maneuver, they can do so incredibly quickly-in much the same way that someone with ADD/ADHD can quickly see how a new piece of information might relate to something they already know.

I have some thinking and reading to do. I will certainly have more to say later.

A Memo to J.J. Abrams

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 23:27:09 PDT

Picking science fiction movies apart for their scientific gaffes–both major and minor–has a long and venerable tradition. When I first saw J.J. Abrams' Star Trek "reboot" in the theater (twice) I enjoyed it immensely. However, the weaknesses of the whole idea of a "supernova" taking out a single habitable planet, the home-world of the movie's villain, was not lost on me at the time (I will not address the "red matter" MacGuffin in detail here). While watching it again the other day on DVD, I thought of a minor tweak that would make the plot element of the destruction of a planet more scientifically plausible and still retain the following storyline benefits:

the plot would still involve a black hole (cue ominous music)
the word “supernova” (hereafter: “SN”) would still be used on-screen
the word “hypernova” (i.e. a really bad-ass big brother to a mere supernova) could be used as well
an opportunity would be created for some really awesome, not yet depicted on the big screen, FX "disaster porn"

So, beginning at the beginning...

Throughout their lives, all the stars we can see on a clear night (and even those we cannot) exist in a state of equilibrium between the outward force of the energy released by the fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones in the star's core, and gravity, which acts to collapse the matter of the star to a central point. When a star is being born from a molecular cloud, as it condenses, the pressure and temperature at its core increases steadily until at about 15 million K,ⁱ thermonuclear fusion begins. Once the fusion process has begun, the the outward radiation pressure of the energy thus released begins pushing back against gravity, settling into a state of what is called hydrostatic equilibrium and there matters stay, at least as long as there is enough of the "fuel" needed to keep fusion going and pushing back against gravity. In the case of our own Sun, it is just barely middle-aged for a star of its size and luminosity and will go on largely as it is today for another 5 billion years.

All good things must come to an end and so it is too with the fusion gravy train. The problem is that a star's supply of elements that can be fused is not infinite. As lighter elements are fused into heavier elements, those heavier products make their way to the star's core, but that is where the highest temperatures and pressures, necessary for fusion, are also. The kind of fireworks called for by the movie going public in their lust for great science fiction disaster porn needs a star (or stars) many tens of tens of times the mass of our sun.

The scale of the disaster porn I'm referring to can only come from the most energetic cosmic phenomena observed by humans, the only thing more powerful yet conceived by science is the Big Bang. These cosmic phenomena are called gamma-ray bursts (GRB's). Gamma-rays are the most energetic, highest frequency form of electromagnetic radiation. To provide a tangible sense of the energy of gamma-rays, anyone who has ever had x-rays taken has likely worn one of those heavy, lead-lined "bibs" to shield the more delicate parts of our bodies (e.g. the reproductive organs). Gamma-rays can penetrate up to several centimeters of lead, over ten times the thickness of lead used to shield patients getting x-rays.

Some (though not all) observations of GRBs are associated with supernovae (the plural form of the singular “supernova”). All by themselves, supernovae are powerful enough (in the visible light part of the spectrum) that for decades, astronomers have used a particular species of supernovae, designated by astronomers as a "Type Ia" supernovae, as part of the "cosmic distance ladder." The circumstances under which they form make them a "standard candle"ⁱⁱ that can briefly outshine the galaxy of which they are a part. Conventional supernovae release these incredible amounts energy in a blast that is a more-or-less spherical wave front of high-speed particles, visible light, and hard radiation, fading over a period of days or even weeks. What makes GRBs different is that they release at least as much energy as supernovae, but do so in seconds, and in two focused directional "beams" thought to be aligned along the magnetic poles of a freshly-minted black hole.

(Any real astrophysicists reading this, please be kind in the hate mail I'm sure you will want to send after what I say next.) As a strictly visual metaphor (the physics behind it, other than the magnetic field connection, is quite distinct) think about the auroras visible from Earth's extreme north and south latitudes, the point being that "stuff" can interact with magnetic fields. Another similar cosmic phenomenon are "pulsars," thought to be (on very solid observational grounds, mind you) rapidly rotating neutron stars (i.e. failed black holes) whose magnetic poles are offset from their rotational poles, creating a "lighthouse" effect, both in the radio and the visible light spectrum, and are detectable for many light-years. In fact, their signals are so precisely timed, when first detected by radio telescopes in the 1960's they were referred to as, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, LGM's for "little green men" as there as there was no known natural phenomena that were that regular.ⁱⁱⁱ

There are several, and not necessarily mutually-exclusive, posited "progenitors" for GRBs,¹ but there is much that is still unknown–leaving a lot of room for science-fictional speculations. Without going into too much detail (a temptation I frequently face) there are short and long-lived (remember, time is relative) GRBs. The so-called "long" GRBs (those lasting more than 2 seconds), have always been observed in connection with supernovae, specifically, a kind of supernovae called collapsars. Collapsars are supernovae whose progenitors are stars of 40+ solar masses, massive enough to have developed a solid iron core, ^iv that collapses straight (well, almost) into a rapidly-rotating black hole without pausing at the neutron-star phase. Short GRB's–those lasting less than 2 seconds, and commonly only fractions of a second-making them hard to detect as one has to be looking at it as it happens to catch it–are thought to result from the merger of a black hole with a neutron star, or of two neutron stars.

If I were writing a script, I would use the black hole + neutron star plot device (you could still have the "red matter") as some sort of "ultimate weapon" gone cosmically awry. You could even use the old science-fiction trope of the "Frankenstein complex"–either the hubris of the scientists involved thinking they can accurately predict and control where the beams will end up pointing, or the militaristic leaders who ignore the warnings of their scientists. The creators could also be some unknown threat from elsewhere (can you say "sequel"?). In the altered time-line of the reboot, presumably, the Borg (unarguably the baddest adversaries the Federation has ever faced) are still out there and the events of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration" still happened. I'm seeing possibilities J.J.! Just think about the disaster porn FX you could get out of the massive jets from the GRB pulverizing star systems as it bores a path of interstellar destruction through the galaxy!

I am too young (at 47, I seldom get to say that much anymore) to remember the original Star Trek (ST:TOS) during its first-run on NBC. Somewhat against type, I was drawn to science fiction by my interest in, and love of, science–and especially astronomy–while it seems that many scientists of my generation were first turned on to science by a love of science fiction. A local TV station started showing reruns of ST:TOS in my first year in junior high, and perhaps not coincidentally, the same year Star Wars: A New Hope was in theaters. Add to this the presence in my school library of the James Blish short-story adaptations of all 79 episodes of ST:TOS and the Alan Dean Foster novella-length adaptations of the animated series (ST:TAS) and you have a perfect trifecta. I was such a voracious reader (I still am) that I had read all of Blish's adaptations long before I saw all the ST:TOS episodes.

As an adult science-geek, one of the things I enjoyed about Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) was that the writers included bits of "sciencey" stuff that one could read about in recent issues of Scientific American, like "cosmic strings" or "dark matter," cutting-edge science stuff. What astronomy undergrad would turn down a chance to review the sciencey bits of a script (if done right, keeping the whole of the script a secret would not be that hard).

Heck, I'm available-and rather cheap, too!

¹ G. Vedrenne, Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Brightest Explosions in the Universe, Chapter 8, (Springer; In Association with Praxis, Berlin; New York; Chichester, UK, 2009).

iIn the Kelvin, or absolute temperature scale, water freezes at 273.15 , boils at 373.15, and all molecular/atomic motion ceases (that is one definition of "temperature") at 0 (zero) Kelvin (note the absence of the "⁰" degree sign). For a star the size and composition of our Sun, the core temperature (partly a function of its mass) is 15 million K.

iiIf a light source lies an unknown distance away, but you know that the source is a 100 watt light bulb, and you have a light meter, the kind used in old cameras, all you have to do measure the power of the light that reaches your meter, do a little math, and viola, you know how far away the light bulb is.

iiiSome pulsar signals are so stable (remember the accuracy claim of the first quartz watches?) make them suitable for use as cosmic “radio beacons” for interstellar navigation. The plaques carried by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes as “greeting cards” to any advanced extraterrestrials that might come across it millions of years in the future illustrated the position of Earth with respect to 14 pulsars using a binary-type code.

ivThe creation of elements, via fusion, higher than iron on the periodic table require an input of energy rather than having energy left over to power the star and push back against gravity-which makes iron, as Isaac Asimov titled an essay on supernovae, the "dead-end middle."

The 48 Percent Part 3 - Slipping Into the Future

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:53:22 PST

Right now, the United States economy, and that of the world in general, is in turmoil–arguably the worst economic disaster since 1929. In my day job, working on the public side the workforce development arena (i.e. Job Service), I see many people that feel strangely out-of-place seeking new employment in the 21^st century world, many of whom were with their former employer for decades.

Even my co-workers are not immune to this sense of bewilderment. The particular branch of my state government for whom I work is in the midst of transitioning, after nearly a decade using Windows XP^® and MS Office XP/2003, to Windows 7/Office 2010. In speaking with my managers and co-workers, I have likened the experience of my co-workers starting up their computers one morning, only to be faced with a completely unfamiliar operating system, to what a blind person would likely experience if they awoke one morning to find their furniture has been rearranged while they slept.

One of my younger co-workers observed, as have I, that many job-seekers that claim to know nothing about computers act as though their ignorance is something of which they can be proud. I am quite willing to grant a pass to those of my parent’s generation (born 1939), those that are at or near retirement age. However, for those young enough to have not yet started elementary school when Sputnik 1 launched in 1957 (i.e. those born after, say 1952/3), there is, barring some notable exceptions that I will address shortly, no excuse.

My day-to-day supervisor thinks that with the rate computer technology is advancing, it will not be long before computers will be completely voice-activated, without the need for keyboards or pointing devices (mice, trackballs, etc.), with perhaps the exception of a finger. The sort of computer-human interaction depicted in Steven Spielberg’s film The Minority Report may not be far off the mark in this regard. History has shown however, that while the pace of technological change is in some regards even quicker than some “futurists” predicted, reliably predicting the direction of the changes is more of an art than a science. Case in point: from the vantage point of the 1950’s through the mid 1970’s, the real 21^st century does not look much like the 21^st most thought it would just several decades ago.

While the changes that have occurred have not been in the anticipated directions, they are every bit as momentous, if not more so, than the long-delayed flying cars in everyone’s garage, orbiting space colonies, and manned Mars bases. Just because we do not yet have flying cars for all, and are still waiting on the lunar vacation resorts, does not mean that the computer revolution of the last 15-20 years was a mere passing fad, as some plainly thought it was. Apparently, a significant number of our fellow citizens (I am almost exclusively concerned with Americans in this piece) were not paying attention.

Another thing that leaves me stupefied is when people act outraged or offended when pointing out that their lack of computer skills will preclude their opening certain occupational doors, as though it is completely unreasonable to expect them to put forth the required effort to acquire new skills in order to make themselves marketable to employers. I am not talking about “average” people knowing how to create their own webpage using html code, or build a relational database from scratch. What I am talking about is “average” folks being able to follow the instructions for filling out an online employment application or finding information about a potential employer by visiting their website.

It is now time for a few caveats and to crank down the “arrogant bastard” tone. Many people (I am referring to adults throughout) find computers intimidating. One oft-repeated frustration I have heard is that some find computer screens too busy; with just too many things to visually track. This produces stress and anxiety, which in turn makes it that much harder to focus and just becomes a debilitating positive feedback loop. Our technological society has created a stimulation-rich environment that did not exist 50+ years ago.

One result of our stimulation and information-rich society has been a marked increase in the identification of, and diagnoses for, cognitive impairments like ADD/ADHD and autism. One mundane reason for this increase is that the diagnostic tools used to detect such impairments have become much more refined as our understanding of how the brain works has grown. The other reasons are best explicated by way of analogy. Brain circuits involved in spoken language were certainly shaped by our evolution, but written language (and formalized mathematics as well) are technological innovations, not things for which the human brain was equipped by natural selection.

There remain a few isolated hunter-gatherer societies in the world today, living much the same way that all of humanity lived prior to the invention of settled agriculture and the first cities. Even after the invention of farming and cities, several more thousand years elapsed before writing was invented. In such pre-literate societies, whether today or in depths of human pre-history, the condition known today as dyslexia was irrelevant in the environment in which such people lived. Additionally, to the extent that “dyslexia” was irrelevant, it would be reasonable to say that, in some sense, “dyslexia” did not exist.

A quote, most often attributed to William James, but first made known to this author via Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, summarizes the situation nicely, “a difference which makes no difference is no difference.” If a difference in brain wiring, known to lead to dyslexia in an environment in which mass literacy was the norm, were to occur in the brain of a person belonging to a pre-literate society, that difference in brain wiring would, in fact, “make no difference” in the life of the individual in their native culture. It is only in an environment where mass literacy is the norm does such a distinction in brain wiring make an important difference.

People today find themselves bombarded by external stimuli (mostly visual and auditory) that were not part of the environment in which Homo sapiens evolved. Navigating the modern world calls upon cognitive abilities that were seldom, if ever, called on just a generation or two ago. Is it any surprise to anyone, especially experts in the cognitive sciences, that the totally novel sensory and cognitive environment of the early 21^st century is revealing heretofore unrecognized, and previously unneeded, strengths and weaknesses in the cognitive endowments of individuals.

One of the names this sort of “sensory overload” goes by is Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), but there are other conditions that exhibit similar symptoms. Much of the relevant peer-reviewed literature available to this author have titles such as:

Sensory processing disorder: Any of a nurse practitioner's business?[i]
The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines[ii]
"Is this Site Confusing or Interesting?" A Perceived Web site Complexity (PWC) Scale for Assessing Consumer Internet Interactivity[iii]
Employment and Adults with Asperger Syndrome[iv]
Information-processing deficits and cognitive dysfunction in panic disorder[v]
Perspectives on sensory processing disorder: a call for translational research[vi]
The Impact of Induced Stress Upon Selective Attention in Multiple Object Tracking[vii]

ADD/ADHD provides a useful analog for this in that it was first identified in children and only later was it realized that the condition persists into adulthood. Many adults, myself included, developed coping strategies and were completely unaware the ADD/ADHD they had as a child was still with them until they were properly tested. It may be that because children are often placed into environments and situations they would rather not be in, that it is in these situations that their struggles stick out like the proverbial sore thumb and provide a “handle” on which to begin a scientific enquiry. Adults, on the other hand, have traditionally had far more control over what situations and environments they choose to be in and after many years of doing so, the avoidance often becomes unconscious. With the majority of research in this area focused on children, I fear that many adults are slipping through the cracks. Adults who, for whatever reason, avoid anything that is too intellectually or cognitively challenging will be at a disadvantage, both in terms of self-sufficiency and providing good role models for their children.

I suspect that the apparent difficulties many adults have in functioning in our current stimulation and information-rich environments are an admixture of genetic/physiological[viii] factors, socioeconomic/cultural factors, and personal choices. Groping for remedies to this situation, without having the vaguest notion of how much of a particular population’s variation in demonstrated cognitive capacity is attributable to which causal factors, is a recipe for failure. Such a “wait it out” attitude essentially admits that some sizable faction of human beings is somehow incapable of being educated or elevated in their competency and understanding. So why not give up right now?

I do not wish to live in a world where a certain percentage of humanity is relegated to a permanent intellectual underclass–not if it can be helped. Putting my “arrogant bastard” hat on again, I also know that many people are, in fact, ignorant, incurious, and complacent. A frequent frustration in my day job is that I am in a bit of a catch 22 in distinguishing those that have a legitimate learning/cognitive disability from those that are merely lazy and/or complacent. Either way, I risk doing a grave disservice to those I work with daily. I do not tolerate fools gladly, and far too often, I must bite my tongue and refrain from telling someone who just could not be bothered to keep up with our changing world, that unless they have a note from their doctor, I am not going to carry their lazy ass.

[i] Byrne, Mary W. "Sensory processing disorder: Any of a nurse practitioner's business?" Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners 21. 6 (2009): 314-21.

[ii] Eppler, Martin, and Jeanne Mengis. "The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines." Information Society 20. 5 (2004): 325-44.

[iii] Gupta, Reetika, Sucheta Nadkarni, and Stephen J. Gould. ""Is this Site Confusing or Interesting?" A Perceived Web site Complexity (PWC) Scale for Assessing Consumer Internet Interactivity." Advances in Consumer Research 32. 1 (2005): 42-50.

[iv] Hurlbutt, Karen, and Lynne Chalmers. "Employment and Adults with Asperger Syndrome." Focus on Autism & Other Developmental Disabilities 19. 4 (2004): 215-22.

[v] Ludewig, Stephan, et al. "Information-processing deficits and cognitive dysfunction in panic disorder." Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience 30. 1 (2005): 37-43.

[vi] Miller Lj Fau - Nielsen, Darci M., et al. "Perspectives on sensory processing disorder: a call for translational research." Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 3. 1662-5145 (Electronic) (2009).

[vii] Morelli, Frank, and Pamela A. Burton. "The Impact of Induced Stress Upon Selective Attention in Multiple Object Tracking." Military Psychology 21. 1 (2009): 81-97.

[viii] When I say “physiological,” I have in mind such things as the environment within the womb, nutrition, or any other biological effect that is not directly attributable to an individual’s genotype.

The 48 Percent Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:39:37 PDT

At Beyond Belief 2006, when speaking about his work on phantom/paralyzed limbs and the denials that can accompany such phenomena, V.S. Ramachandran related a humorous anecdote about a study that asked people if they were above or below average in intelligence. Ramachandran pointed out the fact that like height, the distribution of IQ scores in a population take on the shape of the iconic “bell” curve (called by mathematicians a “normal” or “Gaussian” distribution). The salient property of Gaussian distributions of variations in a population is that 50% of the population will be below the average value (or arithmetic mean) for the trait in question and the other 50% of individuals in the population in question will be above the average value. [1] The punch line comes when Ramachandran reveals that 98% of the survey respondents indicated that they considered themselves to be of above average intelligence, a statistically impossible result which indicates that 48% of humanity are “in denial of their own stupidity.” His point was that even people without brain injury engage in classic Freudian, defensive denials every day.[2] Though the study may have been fictional, it is plain that only 50% of humanity can be of above average intelligence and therefore, the other 50% must fall below that average.

A consequence of the above dilemma showed up in an interview with Lord Martin Rees, Patricia Smith Churchland, A.C. Grayling conducted by Roger Bingham of The Science Network. At about 00:32:00 into the dialog, Dr. Churchland notes that there is (primarily in the United States), and coming from both the far left and the extreme right ends of the cultural/political spectrum, a disturbing undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in general, and of anti-science in particular. She confessed that she does not know how to reach the sort of people who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and/or a certain American news channel that she left unnamed.

The brute fact that half of humanity will always fall above the normalized “average” intelligence (measured by whatever criteria one chooses) and the other half will fall below that “average,” poses a profound problem for skeptics, atheists, scientific rationalists, humanists, and anyone hoping to increase the role of evidence-based critical thinking in the discourse of our democratic republic. Proposed solutions usually involve some combination of better schools and/or teachers, more educational television programs, more popularizations by capable scientists or other public intellectuals, more scientifically accurate Hollywood pictures, or better-trained science journalists. However, what if those things are only partial solutions? What if there is an asymptotic limit to the percentage of people that can be reached by reason and evidence? Amidst all the talk of science and math education in schools and efforts to engage the voting public, there is one question that has not been raised, let alone substantively addressed. What if some significant fraction of humanity is simply not cognitively equipped to think critically or rationally to the degree required to become a scientifically literate citizen in the 21st century?

No matter how “politically incorrect” the above question may seem, the question posed is very worth answering. Asking the question or attempts to answer it is not part of some sinister eugenics program or elitist, racist agenda. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett advocated that all the tools in the arsenal of modern science be applied to understanding religious faith and practice. Dennett also maintained that religious faith is unique in that it is currently off limits to the kind of inquiry he was proposing, hence his choice of title. While it is certainly true that the “taboo” against looking too closely at religious beliefs for fear of dulling their sheen is probably the strongest such taboo, inquiries into other areas of human existence can also set off alarms in some people. It is quite likely that what follows, if taken up by experts in the relevant disciplines (I make no claim to be one), may be an important adjunct to the investigation Dennett proposed. If the question under consideration were “what percentage of human beings can reasonably be expected, based on the heritability of the required traits and assuming an environment that provides the opportunity to excel, would be able perform at the level of an Olympic athlete?”, the question would be entirely uncontroversial. That is precisely the kind of question posed (but not answered) in this series of essays.

As Steven Pinker argued so effectively in The Blank Slate, human beings are not infinitely malleable. Relevant to the topic of these essays is the question of what exactly goes into making someone a skeptical, critical thinker (though not necessarily a scientist)? Obviously, “intelligence” or as it is colloquially called, IQ (after Intelligence Quotient)–an admittedly slippery term–is part of the picture, regardless of how “intelligence” is defined and/or measured. The openness and intellectual honesty demanded by rational inquiry, is essential to not only science, but to history, law, medicine, ethics, or any other field of human intellectual endeavor (not to mention the functioning of a healthy democracy), and is antithetical to any form of authoritarianism. The degree to which someone fits the authoritarian personality type certainly matters too. What is the nature/nurture split for authoritarianism? Likewise, curiosity and inquisitiveness are also essential to being an informed, rational citizen in the 21^st century. However, there are hundreds millions of human beings in the United States alone, never mind the rest of the planet, who seem incurious and uninquisitive. To what degree are curiosity and inquisitiveness malleable or heritable? What areas of the brain light up in when someone that is asked to justify their rationale for thinking that evolution or anthropogenic climate change are preposterous ideas, and yet at the same time finds millennia-old miracle stories of virgin births, people rising from the dead, or nocturnal rides on flying horses, etc. to be completely credible and utterly reliable?

Some of the relevant research in all these areas has been conducted already, with the greatest amount devoted to the heritability of IQ. A limited amount of research has been performed on the heritability of authoritarian attitudes and very little research has apparently been done on the nature/nurture mix for things like critical thinking, tolerance for ambiguity, or curiosity and inquisitiveness. Nearly all attempts to engage the public to further science and reason seem to assume that a majority of those not already so inclined or engaged, can indeed be reached. Those convinced that the future of humanity critically depends on the application of science and reason to the problems that vex this planet would do well to test the assumptions underlying efforts to communicate science and reason in order to better direct their efforts. None of this should suggest in the slightest that if the number of people that can, in principle, be reached is below a certain minimal threshold, the effort is not worth it. Nonetheless, we need to have some idea of how successful we can reasonably expect to be, all other things being equal.

[1] Barring any “self-selection” biases of course.

[2] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. Roger Bingham ed. Session 4. Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival. Salk Institute. La Jolla, CA. November 5 2006. The Science Network. 23 August, 2009. (at 44:12).

The 48 Percent Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:48:04 PDT

I am not a professional, credentialed, scientist – I am just a guy with a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Science (IS) with an emphasis on science communication and the public understanding of science. I do consider myself a serious amateur and in that context, I do what I can to be, in Carl Sagan’s memorable phrase, “a candle in the dark,” a voice for reason in our “demon-haunted world.” I deliberately switched majors to IS from Electrical Engineering because I was so deeply concerned about the lack of appreciation and understanding of what science and critical thinking are, even among very bright students in engineering programs.

My undergraduate thesis involved a planned NSF-funded “Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.”[1] The State of South Dakota, and especially the Governor’s office, made a big deal about how much the planned laboratory could do for science education and attracting high-tech jobs–those involving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM for short)–to the state. My thesis looked that these hopes in light of the realities “on the ground,” considering the fact that South Dakota is very conservative–both politically and religiously. The seed of this research was planted by an incident involving the local YMCA. Rather than “reinventing the wheel”, I will quote from my final paper:

“‘Part of the impetus for this Capstone project came from the opening of The Arts and Science Center at the Rapid City YMCA (YMCA ASC) in 2005. Initially, staff at the YMCA hoped to get students and faculty from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) in Rapid City involved and the SDSM&T student Paleontology Club was especially enthused about the Center as they were to have a room showcasing dinosaurs. When plans for the room were discussed though, it turned out that the room was to consist of little more than colorful murals showing dinosaurs and people, together. As it was, a conservative, home-schooling, Christian mother was a primary financial benefactor of the Center and refused to have anything showing dinosaurs (or people) in their proper geological and evolutionary context. The student Paleontology Club refused to have anything to do with such an intellectually dishonest enterprise and the faculty of SDSM&T likewise has had nothing to do with the Arts and "Science" Center since this issue came to light. From first hand experience, this author also notes that the YMCA ASC also has an astronomy, or “outer space,” room that is completely devoid of any hint of the scale, in both time and space, of the cosmos.”

My research and writing unfolded over an 18-month period. The first task was to convince my readers that there was indeed a problem, so I looked at comparisons between the United States and other first world nations in science literacy and academic achievement and as one might surmise, the United States did not fare well. My research also looked at Math and Science Partnerships (MSPs) which are, as the name suggests, joint ventures between k-12 schools, federal and university laboratories, and industry, aimed at creating the workforce the United States will need to compete and prosper in a 21^st century world. Not surprisingly, the intended metric for the success of such endeavors was through standardized tests.

It was never my intent to answer specific questions, but to pose them. This was the approach that Daniel Dennett took in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.[2] Asking my reader’s indulgence (hopefully) one last time, I will quote the final paragraph from my paper:

“To truly prosper, as a free society and as individuals, it is not enough to merely do well on standardized tests. What is needed are citizens that do not fall for the idea that vaccines cause autism, that do not spend millions, if not billions, of their precious health-care dollars on homeopathic remedies that do not work, and parents that are not so certain of the “power of prayer” as an efficacious treatment for disease that they refuse conventional (i.e. double-blind tested and verified) medical treatment for their sick child. It is quite possible to believe all the things above, and still do well on standardized tests or write sophisticated software for a modern computer. This research, while in no sense conclusive, will hopefully encourage these important issues to be examined in the development of ongoing “Education and Outreach” strategies surrounding the Sanford Lab, and hopefully, the NSF’s DUSEL.”

As my research drew to a close, I was bothered by some nagging questions. In my research, I made a point of discussing the probable relevance of the “Five Factor Model” of personality in describing what personality variables may go into fostering “scientific habits of mind.”[3] The personality traits included in the FFM are:

· Openness to Experience: curious, creative, non-dogmatic
· Conscientiousness: self-disciplined, seeking to avoid error
· Extroversion: outgoing, assertive
· Agreeableness: generous, easygoing
· Neuroticism: anxious, critical of self and others

These traits are not binary qualities, like whether or not a male is circumcised, but are a continuum like height or weight (okay, maybe not weight so much, what with the epidemic of obesity). While the applicability of the FFM to understanding what goes into creating “scientific habits of mind” seems obvious, none of the literature I found gave even a hint of how these traits might be distributed in any population. This is unlike the robust empirical and statistical data showing the distribution of intelligence (or IQ) in a given population. This seems like a good place to stop for now and also a makes a nice segue for the next installment.

[1] "Sanford Laboratory at Homestake". South Dakota Science and Technology Authority. Last modified date not given. 25 August, 2010.< .

[2] To the best of my recollection, I was not intentionally aping Dennett because while I was aware of his book and knew something of what it was about, being a poor student and having purchased Richard Dawkins The God Delusion in hardback, I had to wait until the paperback version of Breaking the Spell came out. By time I could afford to by Dennett’s important book, I had already settled on my research questions and goals for that research.

[3] Shermer, Michael. The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.

A principled postition on an "atheist/agnostic" for the Supreme Court

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:56:52 PDT

Note that the following has become moot for the most recent SCotUS vacancy...

On one of my frequent visits to Richard Dawkins' site I came across a discussion in the News section of an LA Times Op/Ed piece by Marc Cooper whose thesis was that Obama should consider nominating a religious non-believer (actually, Cooper used the word “atheist”) to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCotUS). While it would be nice to have a person of no faith as a member of the SCotUS, actively advocating for an atheist/agnostic as a nominee would constitute a transgression of Article VI, § III of the United States Constitution, which clearly says:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

I am fully aware that the religious lobby have been doing a slimy end-run around the “no religious test” clause by using the fears and prejudices of their voting constituencies to subject candidates to de facto (i.e. “unofficial”) religious test for decades. However much fun it would be to turn the tables on believers by having a religious test of our own (by "our own" I mean the skeptical/freethinking/reality-based community, and this includes even the most "wet behind the ears" atheists), in all intellectual honesty, the only correct answer to the question of what sort of "religious test" ought we make up, is “none.” Personally, I would rather stake out the principled Constitutional high ground on this issue. Further, empirical evidence supports the conclusion that religious believers would be utterly blind to the hypocrisy of their own position as any public statement that does not constitute "thunderous applause" for their position is, in fact, in their distorted world view, callous hostility; they seem to not recognize a "yeah, whatever" (insert whiny, nasal sound when you say "whatever") as a dismissal indicating that whatever was said is actually recognized as irrelevant.

I think Richard Dawkins phrase “conscious raising” is particularly applicable in this case. I would like to see voters, candidates, and the media become reflexively suspicious of candidates that trot out their piety in order to win votes. Likewise I would like to see fellow citizens, candidates, and the media heap scorn and derision upon voters (whether singly or in groups) that attempt to ascertain the religious opinions of candidates. I would love to see the day when in reply to a question put to a candidate about their religious sentiments, they answer with something like this: “The Framers of the Constitution knew well what kind of damage could be done to a country by inflaming religious prejudices and hatreds among its citizens. This is why Article VI, § III of the United States Constitution specifically forbids religious tests for any 'office or public trust.' What the framers likely did not anticipate was the extent to which citizens could be manipulated into creating an 'unofficial' test by unprincipled demagogues with an agenda that care not a whit for the Constitution. Merely asking a candidate or nominee for public office 'are you religious?' is a "religious test" and is antithetical to the ideals and values upon which our Constitution is based and is about the most un-patriotic, un-American thing I can imagine.”

I must confess to being less than sanguine about the possibility of such a day coming to pass in my lifetime (one cannot say that until you are over 45 btw). But as Alexander Pope wrote in 1733 in his Essay on Man, indeed, "hope springs eternal."

PZ Myers, Phil Plait, and the Pope

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:50:57 PDT

Two blog(er)s that I greatly admire, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy and PZ Myers of Pharyngula disagree over just what atheists/skeptics/non-believers/rationalists/free-thinkers (I will be using these somewhat interchangeably throughout the remainder of this piece) ought to be advocating with regards to the revelation (pun intended) that Pope Benedict XVI, while still the (presumably fallible...you can be sure that Bill Donohue will point that out before long) Cardinal Ratzinger, knew of, and was complicit in, the shuffling around of Catholic priests against whom substantive accusations of child sexual abuse had been leveled, in what plainly was, and is, an ongoing attempt to shield those priests (and those above them in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church) from investigations by temporal and civil authorities.

There is even documentary evidence that indicates that the Church has been aware of the existence of pedophilic priests for decades. More documentary evidence has surfaced showing that during the 1990’s, when the scope and extent of the crimes of Catholic priests were just coming to light, the head of the Vatican's office of The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (in the past this office was known as the Inquisition...and in the interest of brevity I will call it the Modern Inquisition from here on), headed by none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, used the supposed spiritual and moral authority of the Church to silence victims and their families. Documents obtained from the time that Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge of the Modern Inquisition plainly shows that his primary concern was with the Church's, and its priests, reputation - not the well-being of the children entrusted to their care by parents and other adults that, believing in the religious authority and supposed benevolence of the Church, trusted that the children would be safe from harm.

So far the arguments seem to be mostly about the supposed "harm" done to the "skeptical movement" by those non-believers (like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, and in my own small way, yours truly) calling for the Pope to be taken into custody by civil authorities should he make trips outside the jurisdiction of the Vatican. Another tack that the critics of those that feel an uncompromising stance is warranted, is that, in the long run, such a stance is harmful to the cause (and I use the term "cause" advisedly) of reason. As PZ puts it, the criticisms seem more about the tone of the more outspoken rationalists than the substance of their arguments.

As bloggers and as science communicators, I admire both PZ and Phil, but they are different people, with different ways of coming at this particular issue, but I have to go with PZ on this one. I am very much in favor of, as Sam Harris has called it, "conversational intolerance" towards peoples' religious beliefs. The Bad Astronomer seems to make a distinction between holders of traditional religious beliefs¹ and, say, anti-vaccination morons, holocaust deniers, and moon landing conspiracy nut-jobs. I do not make such a distinction, and it seems, rightly in my view, that PZ does not either. American citizens are free to enter into, or stay away from, whatever houses of worship they feel most resonates with, or conflicts with, respectively, their individual conscience (for a more academic treatment of this see here - my analysis of Constitutional issues surrounding religion and the U.S. Military for a Constitutional Law class I took while at university).

If gangs of (truly) militant atheists started going around boarding up houses of worship under the cover of darkness or blocking access to them (the way believers attempt to block access to the clinics of doctors that provide abortions), I would proudly defend to my death the right of my fellow human beings to spout whatever supernatural nonsense they wish within the confines of their chosen house of worship. By the same token, I would proudly defend to my death, mine, my children's, or anyone else's right to question, examine, analyze, criticize, and otherwise publicly tear to shreds any publicly stated idea or assertion, religious or not.^² Once religious beliefs, insofar as they are statements purporting to be about the way the world/universe/reality actually works, the veracity of certain historical claims, or that high levels of popular religiosity are necessary to building a prosperous, safe, and just society here on earth, leave the sanctuary (both literally and figuratively) of a "house of worship" they are as open to criticism as any idea in the arts, science, history, or economics.

At the end of Phil's piece, he says we (meaning, I suppose, the "skeptical community") "need to be human and humane" if we wish to "change the hearts and minds of people". As social animals, one of our most precious possessions are our reputations as reliably rational (and the definition of "rational" can vary greatly) beings in our relations with others. What is wrong with idea of putting people on notice that professing absolute certainty in the truth of nonsensical religious beliefs will endanger their credibility? As Sam (now Dr., as he finally finished his Ph. D.) Harris and Richard Dawkins have said repeatedly, we seem to have no problem openly laughing at, and mocking, the beliefs of those that accept the reality of the Norse and Greek pantheons, astrology, "crystal healing," and dowsing. Why is it that there is one remaining superstition that is "off limits?" The beliefs mentioned above have been successfully marginalized, due to, in no small part, the application of heaping amounts of shame and embarrassment upon those that publicly profess their certainty of the truth of the above beliefs.

We inhabit a complex and frequently dangerous world in which we must often rely on others to (hopefully) reliably inform us of the dangers around us and how to avoid them. In practical terms, we cannot all be running around testing every wild mushroom or every colorful berry to see whether it is safe to eat or not; we have to rely on the fact that our neighbors’ information about such things is accurate and well-founded.

An example of what I am talking would be a conversation I overheard between two co-workers not too long ago. Both parties are very conservative and the one speaker is a devout Christian and generally a nice fellow, but the shrapnel from my exploding irony meter would have punched through an armor-plated Humvee at 200 meters. Here is basically what he said..."Yeah, I'll believe 'global warming' is real when I feel the rising sea lapping at my ankles." I remember thinking to myself "oh sure, you accept all of the miracle stories in the Bible as completely credible accounts of actual historical events, but the idea that nearly 7 billion human beings (and all the ancillary stuff of human culture...crops, livestock, etc.-a major part of the Earth's biomass, see this) could have a deleterious effect on the planet's climate...that is simply preposterous..." His credibility as a thinking human being is completely shot as far as I am concerned.

If a student, for whatever trivial reason, failed to do their math homework the previous night and was less than forthcoming in their failure the following day (okay, they outright lied and claimed to have done it), is subsequently called upon to work one of the problems on the board, in front of the whole class, I am quite willing to wager that most people would agree that the shame and embarrassment the student felt was a deserved consequence of their prevarication. This is a reason why people do not like to get caught with their intellectual pants around their ankles. There is not a single adult human being on the planet that is entitled to not being called "on the carpet" (as it was termed during my service in the U.S. Navy) when their faith is writing checks that the evidence and their intellect cannot cash.

Going back to Sam Harris' idea of "conversational intolerance," no one is under any obligation, whatsoever, to treat religious beliefs any differently than any other kind of woo-woo. Scorn and embarrassment are absolutely legitimate weapons in the fight against those that would endanger the future of humanity by clinging to the beliefs of humanity's infancy. Nor could I care less about the hurt feelings of Catholics in all this. I was raised a believer myself (though not a Catholic) and my shame and embarrassment at the many hypocritical moral and ethical failings of my fellow believers, both collectively and as individuals, is one of the reasons I turned my back on the faith I was brought up with. As a believer, I was raised to value honesty, forthrightness, and integrity, and found, much to my family's consternation, that I held everyone to those standards.

I think the "militant" non-believers are right on this issue. For me, and from what I can tell, many other non-believers, based on what they have said and written on this subject, this is a matter of principle. For far too long have "believers" coasted though their existence believing, due in no small part to the complicity of all of us, that they are nice, decent, moral people, all the while largely crediting their religious faith for their supposed "superior" morality, and using that supposed "superior" source of morality as a bludgeon against those that do not share their views. It is high time for all believers to be told, in no uncertain terms, that the core of their supposed "superior" morality is in fact, morally bankrupt.

1I must say in the BA's defense, that he spares no pity for parents that withhold proper medical care for an ill child because of their religious beliefs, though it must be admitted that most prominent conservative Christian sects still take their kids to the doctor when they are sick, it is only the most truly nut-ball cults that deny medical care to children for religious reasons.

2 The idea that our democratic ideals are somehow connected to “Judeo-Christian” traditions is laughable. If democratic ideals were inherent within Christianity or its predecessor, Judaism, why did it take almost two millennia for democracy to rise from the ashes of Periclean Athens and the Roman Republic? In fact, Christianity cursed the west with the idea of the “divine right” of kings to rule of which Europe had to divest itself of before realizing democratic ideals. There is as little foundation for the idea of a secular, democratic republic (which is what the United States is) in the Christian scriptures as there is for Newtonian physics.

Unscientific (and a whole lot else) America

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:18:29 PDT

There is a big hullaballoo going on in the blogosphere between P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula and Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection over Mooney’s and Kirshenbaum’s (M&K) new book Unscientific America. At issue are M&K’s perception of the so-called “New Atheists,” and especially the tone of Professor Myers’ blog and those that comment there. M&K’s main thesis regarding the outspokenly godless is that they are making reaching out to believers that are not already hostile to science that much harder. Of course, those reading this blog can pretty much guess who I think has the better points.

America is indeed deeply mired in scientific illiteracy, but that is not what the “new” atheism, as a cultural phenomenon, is really about. If one had to pick a date to mark the beginning of the outspoken criticism of religious belief, it would have to be September 11, 2001 when it was made clear to many just how destructive dogmatic religious certainty was. Richard Dawkins said, as only he could, what was on the minds of many in an essay entitled “Time to Stand Up,” saying:

“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the "Day of Prayer" in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion.”

Before 9/11, our god-soaked president (Bush II), certain of the ensoulment of blastocysts in Petri dishes, banned the derivation of any new lines of embryonic stem cells, setting back a number of investigations of promising therapies for a myriad of terrible ailments. Following 9/11, President Bush persuaded the American public to support an ill-considered war in Iraq, just as certain in the righteousness of his cause (and just blind to any disconfirming evidence as to whether or not Iraq actually had WMD’s) as the 9/11 hijackers were in theirs.

This new criticism of religious belief was not solely focused (quite rightly in my view) on only the most fundamentalist of believers, but also on the “moderates” (the very people M&K are courting) who provide cover for their more dangerous and fanatical co-religionists. Science is only one of the tools that are now deployed in dismantling the dangerously muddled thinking of the religious. In addition to science, there is history, sociology, ethics, and psychology. It is only because the religious make empirical claims about discernable, objective reality, that, if true for one, is true for all (i.e. souls, an afterlife, parthenogenesis, water into wine, the cessation of planetary revolution, and parting seas, at least when not walking on them) that science and the scientific method have little that is flattering or consoling to say to believers.

On the other hand, I have been a science geek longer than I have been a non-believer and the problem of science literacy (actually, the profound lack of it) is a problem. There is strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in this country, a distrust of ‘book lernin’ that is, in some ways, unique to the United States. To many Americans, the idea that due to education or expertise, someone else’s opinion might be more worthy of thoughtful consideration than theirs is deeply offensive to their egalitarian ideals. As Joe the Plumber might say, “Experts, schmexperts, what do they know? Their guess is no better than mine.” Such things can also be seen in expressions like “they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like me.”

This anti-intellectualism is related to, but not the same thing as religious certainty; but they can form a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Ken Miller, in his book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, touched on this anti-authority, anti-expert, “cowboy” mentality that relies on “gut instinct” as the primary means of “baloney detection,” as one of the reasons that Americans overwhelmingly reject evolution. While I think much of Miller’s thinking is clouded by his Catholic faith, on this point he is, I believe, onto something.

This tendency to “think with our gut,” especially on complex issues, is widespread. As human beings, our intuitive grasp of probability and statistics is shaky at best. A creationist that denies the possibility of chemical evolution in some “primordial soup” leading to the formation of the first replicators, and subsequently life, is making the same errors in probabilistic thinking as an old lady in Vegas who is sure that “her” slot machine is “due” to pay out big today. When in doubt, and absent self-discipline and training in skeptical thinking, humans invariably go with their gut feelings. Religion did not invent this kind of thinking, but as Daniel Dennet might say, religion certainly saw that it was a “good trick” and co-opted it for its own purposes as belief systems evolved.

This is perhaps why otherwise scientifically literate believers (i.e. “moderates”), who may have no problem with evolution or the big bang, so frustrate non-believers and are often the hardest to persuade–scientific rationality has made it about as far as it can go with them. They want to have their cake and eat it too and to avoid the cognitive dissonance and potential embarrassment created thereby, insist, if not demand, that religious beliefs not be criticized, because if we criticize the fundies beliefs, moderates may be forced to confront the bankruptcy of their own beliefs. Were theistic religions to disappear overnight, humanity would still have to contend with hoards of incurious, credulous individuals who prefer to think with their gut. That is why different approaches are needed. We need the outspoken, militant (in a rhetorical and intellectual sense) atheists because the organized religions are so capable of organized carnage “in defense of the faith.” A child called to the blackboard in class when they have not done their homework should feel embarrassed and stupid; in fact, that is the purpose of the exercise–to demonstrate that the best way to avoid looking like a fool is to be prepared and have their “ducks in a row.”

An analogy…in order for a fire to start, there needs to be three things: a source of fuel, a source of ignition, and oxygen. The most effective means of preventing fires is to go after two of the three simultaneously. There is surely an asymptotic limit to reducing human irrationality, and no one is immune; I frequently fish from the same spot on the same lake merely because I have had some very productive days of fishing from that spot; is that entirely rational? Not really. Perhaps the most effective strategy to combating the idiocy of faith is to:

Heap scorn and derision on the claims of organized religion, which the newly vocal atheists are doing very effectively to judge by the increasing numbers of those willing to self-identify as “unaffiliated”, "agnostic," or "atheist" in recent polls. It ought to be as embarrassing to spout religious nonsense in public (outside of a place of worship) as it currently is to admit to making financial investments using astrology.
While doing #1, keep in mind, when dealing with individuals, all the ways thinking can go wrong. Cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology is making great strides in teasing out these things.

Religious faith, whether extreme or moderate, is a parasite that has successfully hijacked common and fundamental thinking errors for its own nefarious purposes and now imperils the whole of humanity. Fighting the pernicious meme of supernatural religion requires that the pathways it uses to infect both individuals and societies be understood and fought on both levels. By coming at the problem from multiple directions, perhaps some headway can be made. In the case of M&K, they ought to be embarrassed because they should know better.

Geology Popularization

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:48:46 PDT

As an Interdisciplinary Sciences (IS) major, I am not-infrequently derided by students with more narrowly focused majors as being something of a scientific voyeur whenever it comes to their specific disciplines. As I am primarily concerned with science literacy and the public understanding of science, I never fail to point out that I am at least better informed about a far greater array of disciplines than they are and am thus able to integrate findings from a diverse range of disciplines into my understanding of the cosmos and communicate that understanding to folks that might have trouble finding the roots of a quadratic equation.

In this, my final semester, I am taking a 300-level Geology (GEOL) course, called “Search for Our Past.” The course consists of studying the geology of North America and how the landforms we encounter in our daily lives have been shaped in the past. As the main project for the course, we are looking at the various geologic provinces of the United States (e.g. Colorado Plateau, Basin and Range, etc.). Probably better than half of the students in the class are GEOL majors, of one sort or another, with the rest being IS majors of one sort or another; which can include pre-med and pre-law students. This has so far been an interesting and challenging class.

As an aspiring “public intellectual” that hopes to, in my own small way, take up the mantle of such giants as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, I can easily, either starting from my extensive personal library of science books, or from the internet, follow the trail of references from a popular work of science, whether it is about physics, cosmology, biology (including evolution), astronomy, the psychology of belief, or history, to the original academic research that underlies the more “popular” works. This does not appear to be the case in geology.

Why is it that I can readily find the “by scientists, for scientists” material to reference when writing a popular piece about neutrino astronomy, but finding equally “meaty” references when putting together a piece on the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest is so much harder? I am not sure exactly why this is, but I do have a hypothesis. Unlike physics or cosmology, for instance, geology, and perhaps chemistry, is not only a science, but an industry, with the requisite “trade secrets,” “proprietary information,” and the like. They are areas that, with the exception of geology in the context of evolution, are not being popularized to the extent of other scientific disciplines. This is something that professional geologists need to work to correct.

Short and Sweet

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:13:39 PDT

It is a sad commentary on the state of American culture when it is thought to be prudent, and folks are even encouraged, to reject a potential mate because of a poor credit score, but if it were known that you rejected a potential mate because of an insufficiently high IQ, you would be thought a monster of arrogance.

Of course, while like obscenity, it may be hard to say exactly what intelligence is, one knows it when they see it, and perhaps unlike obscenity, it is when it is absent that one has the clearest idea of what it is that is missing.

Humility and Hope in the Face of Immensity

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:18:26 PDT

People often ask what it is I hope to do with my degree in “Interdisciplinary Science.” My goal, in my own small way, is to communicate our understanding of humanity's place in the universe as revealed by the methods and findings of science. If I can be even one percent as effective and eloquent as the astronomer Carl Sagan was in communicating the humbling, yet hopeful, self-awareness science makes possible, I will have realized my goal. Made famous by his co-creation and hosting of the PBS television series Cosmos in 1980, he died, far too soon, in 1996. Dr. Sagan was one of the chief scientific investigators for NASA's Viking missions to Mars and the Voyager 1 and 2 missions to the outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft had completed its primary mission in 1990. After passing beyond the orbit of Neptune, Dr. Sagan suggested that the camera aboard Voyager 1 be turned towards Earth for one last look, just as a child, leaving home to begin the adult period of their life, turns back for one last glance of where they started from.

The Pale Blue Dot...

As you watch the video, I hope you not only look at the images, but really listen to, and think about, the words. Throughout my life, similar words and images, and these words and images in particular, have moved me, often to the point of tears, beyond my ability to adequately express. In the video, Dr. Sagan refers to the study of humanity's place in the universe as a profoundly humbling and character-building experience. It is more than that though, for these words, and the ideas behind them, have moved me, inspired me, and above all else, have given me hope which all of the "holy books" of all the world's religions cannot even approach.

Our individual lives, our loves, our tragedies and sufferings, and our occasional, yet all too temporary triumphs, when seen against the staggeringly large scale of the universe–the cosmos, lead many people to feel reduced to insignificance. Instead of humility, they feel despair. Too often, the despair forces many people to turn back, to grasp for something, anything, that will make them again feel significant. This is unfortunate, for it is only part of the message. Standing at the brink of the unknown, if we do not turn back in fear, we find we are capable of exploring our immediate neighborhood, that the new knowledge thus gained enables us to take a few more cautious, yet hopeful steps, into the unknown. Since the realization, hundreds of years ago, that our home, the Earth, revolves about the sun, and not the other way around, humanity's understanding has only grown. The obvious smallness of humanity's home, set against the immensity of the cosmos, when combined with our ability to understand and appreciate these facts, and our determination to continue to explore, is for me, and many like me, a source of profound hope. Humility without Despair and Hope without Certainty...

An Honest Discussion?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:10:13 PDT

Our courts go to great lengths to ensure that trials are as fair as possible. One way in which they do this is the thorough screening potential jurors are subjected to. This is intended to not only exclude those that have already made up their minds about the case but also weed out those candidates that have even a subtle bias that would prevent them from dispassionately evaluating the evidence and testimony presented in court. Should a potential juror that has already reached their own decision about the case misrepresent themselves during the screening process in order to sit on the jury, simply put, they have lied. They were selected under false pretenses and are quite literally, bearing "false witness" to the proceedings, a violation of the 9th Commandment (the 8th for Roman Catholics or Lutherans). Were such a thing to happen, and it unfortunately does from time to time, the juror is guilty of the crime of perjury.

The procedures used by our courts (screening of potential jurors, rules of evidence, rejection of hearsay, etc.) to ensure fair trials are simply a carefully delineated, formalized distillation of the rules for any kind of honest discussion. An honest discussion cannot take place if any party to it is not open to modifying or revising their views during the course of the dialog. To attempt to engage someone in what is billed as an "honest" discussion when ones own views on the subject at hand are off-limits to revision or modification is to misrepresent oneself, to lie.

At its heart, this is a moral issue. Religious believers frequently attempt to engage others in discussions in an attempt to persuade them of the "truth" of their particular dogma. They do this knowing full well that their own views are, at least as far as they are concerned, not open to revision or modification in the light of new arguments or evidence. The blatant duplicitousness and dishonesty of this must be publicly exposed and loudly condemned in no uncertain terms. Many believers seem to think that it is permissible to deceive others (not to mention themselves), either by lies of omission or commission, whenever it is believed to be justified by their beliefs. This double standard is morally and ethically reprehensible and something which should not be tolerated, either in the public square or in one's personal relationships.

On "Faith"

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:08:13 PDT

“Faith” is a very slippery concept and the meaning changes with the context in which it is used. In our culture we are inculcated from a young age to regard “faith” as a virtue. But is it always a virtue? One of ways in which the word “faith” is used is a relatively trivial one, commonly used in the context of encouraging another person, as when a parent encourages their nervous son or daughter before a musical recital or big exam by saying something like: “You’ll do fine, I have faith in you.” Another, more profound way in which the word is used is when someone says something like: “I have faith in the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and in the Enlightenment values of reason and free inquiry on which the leading Founding Fathers drew.” A third way in which “faith” is used is in defending ones certainty of the truth of a proposition when there are no other good reasons to conclude that it is, in fact, true. Too frequently, one reads of a child that dies because their religiously devout parents refuse needed medical treatment, choosing instead to place their “faith” (and their child’s life) in God’s hands. I consider such certainty or “faith” a moral abomination. Many Christians assert the literal truth of the story of the creation of Adam and Eve as outlined (twice, in fact) in the book of Genesis, even though there is not a scrap of compelling evidence external to the Biblical tradition that it is true––it is accepted on “faith,” not because of good evidence.

Religious believers frequently claim that atheism is a “faith.” This may have been true in centuries past, when humanity’s primitive understanding of the workings of the universe seemed to leave the Deity with plenty to do. As time passed, as we learned more about the way the universe works, God’s job description has become shorter and shorter. For several centuries, stories have been told about a mysterious ape-like creature roaming about the Pacific Northwest and of a giant water creature in Scotland’s Loch Ness. Despite decades of searching with the latest technological tools, no substantiated evidence that either creature exists has turned up. Short of paving over the entire Pacific Northwest or draining Loch Ness we cannot be absolutely certain that they do not exist, but does it really require “faith” to at least suspect that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster might not exist after all? Not hardly.

Father's Day Greetings and Other Miscellanea

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:51:34 PDT

Happy Father’s Day to all the other Dads out there. Unfortunately, I live apart from my children but still manage to stay close to them by keeping the lines of communication going. The key is to be there emotionally. Just as it is all to common for fathers to be there physically but not emotionally, it is also possible to remain emotionally accessible to your children even when you are separated by a long airplane ride.

In other news…I have started my one class for the summer. I am at that point one’s college education where you’ve nearly run out of classes that you need or are even remotely interesting. The one class I found was on Middle Eastern history. This should be an interesting one. I certainly have opinions on the historical roots of what is going on in that part of our planet but I also know I do not have all the facts yet either and may very well find out I am mistaken in many things. I have already chosen the subject for the obligatory “paper.” My research question will be:

“Why are fundamentalist Islamic movements are so strong and why there seems to be such a lack of progress in democratic movements in Middle Eastern countries and are they related?”

This should be an interesting topic to explore. Stay tuned for updates…

Hundreds of channels, and they're all crap!

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:02:04 PDT

I am a documentary junkie, I admit it. Not too terribly long ago there were fairly reliable sources for such programs on networks like The History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and A&E. Now these networks are filled with shows like Ice Road Truckers, Axmen, and Dirty Jobs. If I were trapped to a desert island and had a chose between an overly-credulous UFO show and a show about high school dropouts working shit jobs, I’ll pick the UFO show.

I am a snob, I admit. It is not that I do not appreciate the essential work such people do in our modern economy; I completely agree with the sentiment of the opening lines on Dirty Jobs, where the host/narrator speaks of the jobs “that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.” To my mind though, these shows place these people on a pedestal and carry the not-so-subtle message that “you don’t need to be smart, you don’t need to study or do well in school; as long as you are willing to sweat like a pig and grunt like a “real man” (even if you are female) you will do fine and people will respect and admire you.”

Wrong, wrong, and wrong! Having done my share, I know there is nothing to be ashamed of in honest labor. However, documentaries ought to elevate our awareness of the world around us and our aspirations within it. Above all else, my respect for people is determined by the quality of what goes on in the space between their ears and that is what documentaries ought to foster.

The Final Primaries

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:37:25 PDT

At the moment, I am living in one of the last states to hold their primary elections, South Dakota. I grew up here but was absent, except for short visits, from 1983 until 2005. With the Democratic race going right down to the wire, South Dakota voters (at least the Democrats) are the recipients of much unaccustomed attention from Senators Clinton and Obama. This attention is probably a good thing if it serves to overcome voter apathy and get people fired up for the whole informed self-government thing.

Though I am not registered with any political party, I certainly won’t be voting Republican. Nor am I terribly enthused about the Democratic contenders. The lengths the Democratic candidates have gone to in bending over backwards to appeal to “people of faith” have, quite frankly, appalled me. Sen. Obama announced on May 31^st that he has withdrawn from membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago after repeatedly having to distance himself from the incendiary rhetoric of its pastors. The mess he got himself into with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright would likely not have risen to the pitch that it did if he was not straining to place what ought to have been private piety on public display.

Senator Clinton is equally guilty of “public displays of piety” (PDP’s). In the same way that public displays of affection (PDA’s) that get out of hand can make one want to shout “Get a room!,” going overboard on the PDP’s make me want to shout “Take it to a church!” Of course, I do not think that anything Sens. Clinton or Obama could do would set as dangerous a precedent as Sen. McCain choosing Mike Huckabee, a minister that wants to rewrite our constitution to conform to biblical law, as his running mate. That pairing would give us a Commander-in-Chief and a Pastor-in-Chief.

What I would like to see (I know, keep dreaming) is a candidate that replies to the first question about his or her religious opinions by saying something along the lines of:

“Article 6, Section 3 of the United States Constitution specifically prohibits any ‘religious test’ for public office. I submit that your question constitutes just such a test and violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. At best, merely asking the question highlights your ignorance of the Constitution, and at worst it represents a deliberate attempt to subvert the Constitution, which is about the most un-American thing I can imagine. It is for the reasons I have just given that I refuse to answer the question.”

I realize that this is not going to happen and that leaves me less than sanguine about the future of our free Republic. As Edward R. Murrow, who saw this coming, said...“Good night and good luck.”

Capstone Project Blog

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:40:51 PDT

I am going to be doing something a bit new. I am scheduled to graduate in December 08 and I have a senior Capstone Project to do and I thought it would be fun, as well as therapeutic, to blog about it.

First, a description of my project (from the formal proposal):

“In July 2007, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds announced that the former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota had been chosen by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the site for a new Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL). South Dakota had already invested considerable state monies in preparing the former Homestake mine for this purpose and in lobbying the NSF and the scientific community generally. The Governor, in persuading legislators and the public to make the investment in the mine’s rehabilitation, in addition to the obvious economic benefits, frequently touted the benefits of having such a facility to education, particularly science education.

There have been successful partnerships between large laboratories before, notably FermiLab in Batavia, Illinois. This research will propose to answer the questions of:

· What does it take, on the part of a laboratory or research institution, for a successful partnership with local schools?

· What does it take, on the part of local schools, for a successful partnership with the laboratory or research institution?

· To what extent does a community’s understanding of, and attitudes towards, the methods and findings of science affect the success of such partnerships?

While the United States is still a world leader in science, its lead is rapidly dwindling. A study published in the 11 August, 2006 issue of the journal Science revealed that, out of 32 European countries and Japan, America ranked virtually at the bottom of the list in the percentage of their citizens that accept biological evolution as the driving force behind the diversity of life on Earth. At the top of the list were the northern European countries, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden respectively. The only country surveyed that is less accepting of the fact of biological evolution than the United States is also the only majority Muslim country in the survey, Turkey; which according to the CIA World Fact Book is 99.8% Sunni Muslim (Miller, et al.).

Fundamental research is often conducted at public expense and justifying this expense to citizens is difficult to do if those same citizens believe that evidence-based inquiry into fundamental questions threaten their most basic beliefs. If the United States is to maintain its position as a world leader in science this will have to change and forming effective, fruitful partnerships between schools, communities, and researchers is one way of doing this.”

Having come back to the Black Hills of South Dakota in the fall of 2005 to finish my Bachelors degree after leaving in 1983 for my Navy career, I was excited and a wee bit proud to hear that the old Homestake mine was being seriously considered by the NSF for their new underground laboratory. As I reacquainted myself with the cultural mindset of my childhood home, I was a little less sanguine about the reception that the lab, and the personnel running it, might receive.

I was particularly chagrined by the 2006 abortion battle and could not help but ask myself if accomplished, enlightened scientists would want to pack themselves and their families off to such socially and culturally provincial place. Had the state government even considered how the work done at the lab (i.e. fundamental physics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology of deep underground life) would be received by South Dakotans—given that it runs counter to the religious world view of a sizable part of the state’s citizens? On a humorous note, I pictured a Monty Python or Mel Brooks-type mob storming the DUSEL with torches and pitchforks to put an end to their godless quest to understand the laws governing the universe.

I have a lot of research yet to do on the subject and I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the thorough treatment of evolution in the local high school science curriculum when I recently had the opportunity to look it over. I do still want to find out if the Rapid City Area Schools (hereafter abbreviated RCAS) allows students to “opt out” of certain parts of the standard curriculum if their parents have objections to the standard curriculum.

Stay tuned for more…

Works Cited

Miller, Jon D., et al. "Science Communication: Public Acceptance of Evolution." Science 313.5788 (2006): 765-66.

Thoughts on a Human Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:58:10 PDT

Tragically, the places likely to be devastated first and worst by Global Environmental Change (GEC) are the poorest, most overpopulated regions of the world. There are many elephants in the room that need to be dealt with and one of them is culture (and that includes religion). The governments of such countries must realize that their (predominantly) patriarchal cultures in which women are treated like breeding livestock and that are beset by rampant overpopulation, illiteracy, and lack of economic opportunity, must change. The problem is, no one is going to come right out and say that "The culture of _________ is primitive, backwards, and positively maladaptive in the 21st century."

When natural disasters strike regions where life is already marginal at best due to overpopulation, the loss of life is magnified many times over. Not to pick on Myanmar and Bangladesh, which recently suffered terrible natural disasters, but Western, industrialized countries did not overpopulate those nations. The citizens of those countries did. They were ignorantly following the dictates of their culture, the kind of dictates that have no place on an Earth of nearly 6.7 billion human beings. The first person to say any such thing publicly will undoubtedly be called a “racist,” some reading this may well call me that.

I am not a racist; we are all pretty much the same with respect to our innate biological capacities and what differences there are between individuals have nothing to do with skin color. I am saying that certain cultural practices (i.e. treating women like 2^nd class citizens, refusing to educate them, and at the onset of menses, forcing them to marry much older men who demand they produce lots of healthy male children) have deleterious effects that can ripple across a globe as crowded as ours. I am saying, that in countries plagued by rampant poverty and overpopulation, responsibility for the consequences need to be laid right where it belongs, on the doorsteps of the “cultures” that facilitate the poverty and overpopulation in the first place.

This is not to say that the West does not have its own elephants to deal with, because it does. I am stunned by the idiocy of American automotive makers that offer free gas to induce fools to buy SUV’s instead of actually doing something to make said SUV’s use less gas! In America, people must be made to feel the cognitive dissonance of thinking that what their adult neighbors do for consensual fun in the privacy of their bedroom should be regulated by the “state” but “by God, if I want to drive my Cadillac Escalade that gets 16 mpg on my 60 mile daily commute, that is my God-given right as an American, at least until the Rapture™.”

Humanity will not continue to flourish on this planet in the future by declaring valid criticisms of short-sighted or antiquated cultural practices “off limits.” What will get us though the next century and a half or so is the absolute intellectual honesty to call a spade a spade with respect to behaviors and practices that are short-sighted, ill-informed, or just plain stupid, even at the risk of offending someone’s cherished cultural values.

A Reply to Mr. James

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:44:58 PST

A reader was kind enough to comment on one of my recent posts. I will try to answer each of the points raised. The readers’ original comments will be indented and italicized. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors are as in the original and will be underlined for easy identification.

Mr. Mark Northrup. I stumbled upon your space in msn spaces and followed your link here. I am not sure why I am commenting on your blog except that I, being a Christian, have never found an ex-Christian to really have been a true bible believing Christian as they claim. Sure there are those who say they believed as I believe. However after asking a few of them some simple questions I found they never really believed those things set out in your blog here under proposition #1 ever.

I think Mr. James's difficulty in finding any ex-Christians that were ever, to his mind, “bible-believing” Christians, is the sense in which he uses the word “believe.” For my part, I honestly accepted the items in proposition set #1 as being true statements about the world. I also fully expected, quite reasonably, that those propositions would be fully consonant with all the other facts about the world, those already known as well as those yet to be discovered. I suspect that his idea of a true “bible-believing” Christian does not concern themself with whether their beliefs are consistent with all the other facts of the world. This is a nice segue into the next section.

Before I go any further let me say that I am a 48 year old male and I cannot remember a time in which I was not a Christian. I am not college educated nor do I have a large vocabulary, so I have had to stop and look up some of the $5 words you used. If you would bear with me I would like to comment on a few of your assumptions and comments.

My correspondent is outright admitting that he is intellectually unequipped to argue the points I raised yet still has the hubris ask that his arguments be taken seriously. This is an excellent example of how so many believers feel that their willful ignorance of the facts of the world, especially where they might impact their religious beliefs, is actually a virtue on their part. The only reason that they do not feel that their ignorance of say, radiologic diagnosis (detecting injuries and illnesses by the examination of x-rays, MRI’s, and CAT scans), actually qualifies them to “hang out a shingle” and pronounce their diagnoses, is that their incompetence would soon become evident. The bulk of their religious pronouncements however, are safely beyond the reach of contrary evidence-behind the curtain of death. There are nonetheless, some examples from the real world, such as the one given below, of where willing ignorance of the facts of the world can insulate a believer from argument and evidence.

In I Kings 7:23 it says:

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. (KJV)

The ratio of the circumference (C) of a circle to its diameter (D) is denoted by the Greek letter π (pronounced pi). Mathematically, it is expressed as C/D and the best modern value, to 5 decimal places is 3.14159. This means that for any circle, anywhere in the universe, C/D = 3.14159…. In the passage from the bible quoted above, D = 10, and C = 30. This means, that to the writers of the bible, π = 3.00000. A reasonably accurate determination of the value of π was essential to all of the monumental building projects of antiquity. What were the values of π used by two of the greatest monumental builders, both of whose civilizations were well-known to the authors of the bible, the Egyptians and the Babylonians? The value of π as determined by the ancient Egyptians was 3.16049, the ancient Babylonians calculated it to 3.125. No wonder that King Solomon had to call in outside construction experts to help build the temple in Jerusalem. There are some “clever” explanations as to how this is not really an error, but why, if the ancient Israelites really had a direct line to the Creator of the Universe™, should there be even the slightest appearance of error?

In the language of mathematics, π is an “irrational” number, meaning that no ratio of any two whole numbers will, when one is divided by the other, yield an exact integer result; there will always be a remainder (remember those from long division in grammar school?). Even more than being irrational, π is a “transcendental” number, which means that an exact value can never be determined in a set number of calculation steps; the result will be a never-ending, non-repeating sequence of digits. There is currently a world wide distributed computing project that is attempting to calculate π out to an accuracy of billions of decimal places. If the Bible were really the One True Word of the Creator™ then, at the very least the ancient Israelites should have had a better approximation to π than their neighbors did; and if Jehovah really wanted to continue impressing humanity down through the ages, then they would have had a value so fantastically accurate for their era that the only possible, logical explanation would have been that they really did have a direct line to The Mind of God™. Unfortunately, that was not the case. In reality, the ancient Israelites were a backwards bunch of nomadic goat herders who had serious problems keeping shit (their own and their animals) out of their food and water supply. It’s okay though really, because most modern Christians “don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout none of that;” they just “believe.”

My correspondent goes on to quote my original piece, beginning with “Another difference between proposition sets 1 and 2…” and ending with “…they get embarrassed and become offended.” His rebuttal to this is as follows:

There are no "evidentiary shortcomings" of the Christian faith. The same way that the evidence of your set of propositions #2 have been believed is the same way for Christian evidence. It is based on eye witness accounts of the events. You may choose to believe the eye witnesses of prop. #2 and not the eye witnesses of those in prop#1. That is your right. Now you would be correct in saying that there are no eyewitnesses of Adam and Eve, however, I can also say there were no eyewitnesses to the first living ameoba suddenly appearing. (How come that belief was not mentioned in your prop.#2? Isn't that a fundamental belief of evolution?)

The gentleman could not possibly be more wrong about the reliance of a rational understanding of events in human history on mere eyewitness accounts. Eyewitness accounts may be a starting point, but then one looks for corroborating evidence that does not rely on other eyewitnesses. How is it that people are convicted of a crime in our courts, even in the absence of eyewitnesses? He also missed the point of the items in proposition set #1...they are all miraculous suspensions of natural laws. The Scottish philosopher, David Hume (1711-1776) said it best in his “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”:

“That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish…”

Paraphrasing this for the more simple-minded, “Which is more miraculous, that Bubba actually levitated up into the air and flew around their bass boat, or that his drinking and fishing buddies, who claimed to witness the event, in fact, 1. misperceived a more mundane event, or 2. were the perpetrators of a practical joke, or 3. may themselves have been the victim of someone else's practical joke?" Anyone of sound mind that has ever been to see a stage magician knows that they can be misled, that their eyes can be made to deceive them. Sometimes we meet someone on the street and we swear that we have met them before when we actually have not. Several hundred people (and counting) have been released from prisons nation-wide, exonerated by DNA evidence; people that were often convicted based, in part, on the testimony of eye-witnesses. Julius Caesar was widely believed to have performed miracles, but historians do not buy into them, though they are quite confident that Julius Caesar existed, based not merely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, as my reader seems to think, but on copious documentary and archaeological evidence. Where the supposed eyewitnesses report things which are clearly preposterous, like miracles, those particular claims are dismissed.

Let us look at the quality of the “eyewitness testimony” of the New Testament. The gospel of Mark is generally acknowledged as the first to be written, based on similarities between it and Mathew and Luke. Mathew and Luke relied so heavily on Mark, in fact, that they often lifted whole sentences from Mark. However, we have no, zero, zilch, nada, zip-of the original manuscripts for any of the New or Old Testament. What then, does it mean to say that they are the inspired, inerrant Word of God™ in the "original autographs," if the only maniscripts we have were written decades or even centuries after the "original autographs," were first composed. The earliest (i.e. traditional) date of composition for Mark is after the death of Peter in Rome and even by non-critical (i.e. fundamentalist) scholars is acknowledged to be, at best, a second hand account of the life and sayings of Jesus. More recent scholarship (as time goes on and we learn more and find more and better manuscripts to work with) places the composition to after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 c.e. In Mark 14:12 it says:

12: And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover? (KJV)

Then later in Mark 15:25, according to the flow of the narrative, the following day, it says:

And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.(KJV)

So, according to Mark, Jesus was crucified on the third hour of the day after the Passover meal. But wait…in John 19:14, it says plainly that Jesus was crucified on the sixth hour of the day before the Passover meal was eaten:

14: And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! (KJV)

Any jury member, in any court in the country, that did not have their head up their ass, if presented with such inconsistent “eyewitness” testimony on the witness stand, would immediately disregard it and seriously question the general credibility of the of the prosecution's case.

As for Mr. James bringing up evolution (I did not mention it in my original post), he once again places his ignorance on display for all to see. First off, the emergence of the first “living” systems from non-life is not part of evolutionary biology, at least not to evolutionary biologists and they are the experts in the field and they are the ones that get to decide what is and is not part of their field. An amoeba is actually a very advanced single-celled organism, as single-celled organisms go. There are far more primitive forms of life that he could have picked, but any of them would still have been wrong in the context he tried to use them. If (or more likely, when) scientists do uncover a possible biochemical pathway for the appearance of the first living systems, it will have not the slightest effect on our understanding of say, the evolution of horses.

Once again, he tries to make the case that there is something especially trustworthy and reliable about eyewitness testimony, that it is as good, or even better than, physical evidence-and that no amount of disconfirming physical evidence can refute eyewitness testimony; nor does he even, at the very least, require an eyewitness account to be consistent with the known laws of the universe. If Mr. James truly believes this, then he must accept contemporary accounts from India of swamis levitating themselves in front of crowds of followers, because their eyewitness testimony is irrefutable. In fact, Mr. James apparently gives more credence to the eyewitness testimony of backward primitives from millennia ago, people who thought weather was literally the work of God (or gods), had no clue that disease was cause by germs, and lacked any clear understanding of how babies are made-he just takes them at their word, because in his world, they were incapable of both deceiving others or being themselves deceived.

He goes on to write:

Some things have been established as truth by either known historical people believing this as truth or by reason.

So you see what you now believe is based on the same things in which I believe Christianity to be true.

Can you say when a sea creature decided to swim out of the ocean and live on the land? Yet you believe that to be fact. Is that really "objective reality"? You cannot prove that in a science lab any more than I can prove Jesus walked on water. You could not find your belief that man and ape had common ancestors in an encylopedia 200 years ago either. I can make the same point about your new beliefs as you make about a Christians. That as you said is fruitless.

I guess I just wanted to say that so I will finish not with an appeal for you to become a Christian but that you should come up with a better reason why you should not believe in Jesus as the Christ.

My reply to the first few lines: Remember Julius Caesar and his “miracles.” Enough said about that. As for the first life form to crawl out of the sea and on to the land…there is actual evidence, the same sort of “forensic,” physical evidence that is used in our courts of law-NO MIRACLES ALLOWED!!!!! I cannot emphasize that enough. We have fossils of some of the first creatures that were equipped to have crawled up on land, yet also possessing fish-like features, found in sedimentary rocks which have been reliably dated using a variety of radioactive dating methods. As a side note, carbon-14 dating is never used to date fossilized remains and is only good to about 50,000 years before present. The methods used to date fossils are methods such as fission-track dating, argon-argon dating, strontium-rubidium dating, and potassium-argon dating, which collectively, are valid over time-scales of billions of years. If, as some creationists claim, we do not really know what we are doing when we are dating rocks, then how is it that we know at least enough to use our “faulty” understanding of radioactivity to treat cancer and build bombs and reactors, that despite our ignorance (so the creationists maintain) work anyway?

Mr. James is right that evidence that man and apes share a common ancestor could not have been found 200 years ago, but radioactivity was not known 200 years ago either; does he therefore deny that uranium and radioactivity existed back then? The idea of “inoculating” against an infectious disease was not known in the West until about 1720, does he therefore think that before then disease was not caused by microorganisms? Mr. James makes a flagrant non-sequitur , which for the uneducated, is Latin for “it does not follow,” meaning that it is an entirely irrelevant statement that literally “does not follow” from what came before it. In fact, the situation is even worse (for him) as regards the shared ancestry of man and the apes than Mr. James apparently knows, assuming of course that he accepts that DNA analysis is a reliable tool for determining how related two individuals are. In 2004, in a study published in Nature, the journal of the Royal Society, the most prestigious, peer-reviewed science journal in the world, brilliantly confirmed a prediction of evolutionary theory (I use theory in the same was scientists do, in the sense that gravity is “just a theory” which, lo and behold, WORKS!!!!!). Human sex cells have 23 chromosomes and those of our closest relatives, the great apes, have 24. Therefore, a testable prediction of evolutionary theory has long been that if humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor, then there ought to be evidence of either a splitting of some of the 23 human chromosomes to yield the 24 of the chimpanzee gametes (sex cells) or a fusion of some of the 24 chimpanzee chromosomes to yield the 23 of the human gametes. In the aforementioned Nature paper, scientists had actually identified which two chimpanzee chromosomes merged and now form part of specific chromosomes in the human genome. This is how science works and this is also how crimes are solved and the guilty are punished and the innocent are exonerated…if things actually happened in the way explanation “A” claims, if we look in a certain place we ought to be able to see some evidence that “A” is the correct explanation. Likewise, if no confirmatory evidence is found, then we need to re-examine whether no not explanation “A” is correct.

Mr. James is correct in his statement that I was probably not ever his sort of Bible-Believing Christian™. His kind of “belief” is the belief of the wife of a philandering husband that he is in fact, faithful; a wife that is able to dismiss or blind herself to all the subtle hints and clues that her husband is actually cheating on her, even to the point of denying the validity of DNA tests which show that her “faithful” husband is, in fact, the father of his secretary’s child. My belief in any proposition is predicated on how well the proposition fits together, both internally and with everything else that is known about the universe. Just as my belief in my child’s explanation of how the lamp was broken can be destroyed unexplained holes, gaps, and inconsistencies in their story, so too can my acceptance of any other proposition, even religious ones. The fact that Mr. James feels he is under no such constraint with regards to his beliefs only serves to make my initial point, so I really must say thank you Mr. James.

Some Thoughts on Science Communication

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:29:32 PST

As one who aspires to (humbly) carry on the noble work of conveying science to the public in the vein of people like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Stephen J. Gould, I recently become a student member of the National Association of Science Writers. For a senior-year science writing course, we were to review and critique the primary professional website in our respective fields. My classmates are from a number of different fields including computer science, several engineering disciplines, and pre-med, just to name a few.

I realize that I may live to regret posting this here as my analysis may be read by other association members, but I feel this piece has a wider applicability than just the dozen or so people that would otherwise read it...

In the first decade of the 21st century there are very few public policy issues that are not profoundly affected by science and to have an electorate that is not scientifically literate and informed is a recipe for disaster. This is why having a competent cadre of professional science writers and communicators are essential for a 21st century democracy.

The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) (http://www.nasw.org/) is the largest professional association of science writers in the United Sates. The purpose of the association is clearly stated in Section 2 of their constitution (see: http://www.nasw.org/about/const.htm):

PURPOSE OF ORGANIZATION. This organization shall foster the dissemination of accurate information regarding science and technology, through all media normally devoted to informing the public; and shall foster the interpretation of science and its meaning to society, in keeping with the highest standards of journalism. In addition, this organization shall foster and promote the professional interests of science writers.

Based on what is available to non-members on their web site, this essay will attempt to answer the question of how effective the association is in achieving their purpose.

The NASW website, conspicuously devoid of commercial advertisements, is quite plain and utilitarian, but it is also straightforward and easy to navigate. Non-members have limited access to the site but there is nonetheless plenty of content available to the casual browser. At the top left, there is a “members only” area where members can view current and past editions of the
quarterly journal of the society, called Science Writers. Along the left-hand pane is a link to a “bookstore” section containing titles of interest to current and prospective science writers. Under “Member-Only Services” are job search and referral resources, a membership directory, and links for members to manage their individual accounts. On the right-hand pane are links to teaching and professional development materials, and to topics of interest to those that may be considering a career in science writing.

Just below the NASW logo at the top of the homepage is a small, red-bordered box that cycles through “science” news headlines from various on-line sources. Somewhat troubling is that one of the sources is Yahoo! News. Many scientists and critical thinkers place Yahoo! News above only the National Enquirer on the scale of journalistic and intellectual credibility.

Informally founded in 1934 in New York City by twelve pioneering science writers and formally incorporated as a professional society in 1955, the association is largely geared towards the professional development of science journalists who either work for major media outlets (broadcast and print) or those that freelance. There are currently about 2900 members in fields such as science writing, editing, science writing teachers, and students.

The NASW provides for the professional development of its members by working with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to provide fellowships and internship opportunities for NASW members (http://www.nasw.org/resource/beginning/ archives/000183.htm#more). The Association also has an education committee but accessing specific information about it and what it has to offer requires member-only access.

As a service to prospective science writers, the site features an archived listserve exchange from 1997 resulting from a new member introducing herself to the group. (http://www.nasw.org/resource/beginning/archives/000145.htm#more) From the exchange, it is obvious that there is a diversity of viewpoints on the nature of science writing and reasons the various posters went into the field. The posters seemed to be divided into two main camps; working scientists who decided, for various reasons, to turn their hand to science writing and others who came to it from non-science journalism or another writing background. There was an obvious note of elitism in the comments of some of the traditional journalism types who took great umbrage at the thought that a scientist with no formal education in writing or journalism could just jump in and try their hand at science writing.

The statement of ethics for the association is found at http://www.nasw.org/about/ethics.htm.
The ethics of the Association seem largely concerned with avoiding giving the appearance that the Association is taking a stand, as an organization, for or against some issue or another. What is disturbing is what is not in their code of ethics. What is absent is a requirement for science writers and journalists to uphold in their work of communicating science to the public, the same kind of hard-nosed, rigorous intellectual honesty that is the heart and soul of scientific inquiry. Science is a systematic method for understanding the world; it is a process, not a collection of results; and those that write on scientific subjects for the public need to routinely convey this component of the scientific enterprise to their readers. It is the intellectually sloppy and simplistic standard of “he said, she said” journalism that gave the public the manufactured Global Warming “debate,” which persisted long after those in the field achieved a general consensus and convinced a gullible electorate that there is a legitimate, scientific alternative to biological evolution called “Intelligent Design.” This is a great disservice to the public and ill-equips citizens to make informed choices in both the voting booth and in their personal lives.

Science writers called to a press conference announcing an astounding breakthrough that fail to ask the scientists present why they chose to not submit their work to the normal error-correcting mechanism of peer-review is being, at best, sloppy, or at worst, intellectually dishonest. Since the days before the American Revolution, it was the very raison d’être of journalists to ask embarrassing questions. By refusing to ask hard questions, by being disinclined to risk alienating an interviewee in pursuit of a “story” that will sell, they are betraying the trust placed in them by a public that expects them to make sense of humanity’s ever-evolving understanding of the universe.

As a new student member of the NASW with full access to the listserve archives and current and past issues of Science Writers, I am happy to report that the discussion has evolved from the 1997 discussion mentioned above. On-line science writing and journalism, in the form of blogs, are recognized as an essential component in accomplishing the purpose of the NASW. While there are still some hold-outs for a more passive, traditional form of journalism in science writing, the contributions of writers trained in the methods and philosophy of scientific inquiry are certainly going to be keeping the more traditional journalists on their toes.

So does the NASW achieve its stated purpose? The answer would appear to be “Yes” but at this point, only imperfectly and with much room left for improvement. The evolution of the internet has allowed working scientists the opportunity to break into the field of science writing by giving them a means of posting their reflections on issues that concern them as scientists and citizens. The rapid feedback from readers which the internet enables, has in turn, allowed budding science writers to hone their skills far more quickly than was possible in the days of traditional print journalism. As a whole, the NASW is embracing this change as it strives to fulfill its vital mission.

Why Care What They Believe?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:26:29 PST

During a recent conversation with my brother (also a non-believer), he asked, what is the big deal if someone believes in God? Being able to clearly articulate why one has the opinions one does is always a good thing, so I thought about why I am as strident as I am. This essay is the result.

Belief in something called God is harmless enough if it is Spinoza’s God (this is the non-dice playing God that Einstein spoke of) that is manifest in the Natural Laws of the universe. The reason I am as strident as I am is that almost no one who says they believe in God believes in Spinoza’s God; the God they believe in is the personal, interventionist God of the Bible. This belief is, in turn, almost invariably the progenitor of a whole memeplex of subordinate propositions (proposition set #1):

· Adam and Eve were, literally, the first human beings on earth as recounted in the Book of Genesis

· The sun, quite literally, did stand still for Joshua

· Jesus really was born to a woman that never had intercourse until after Jesus was born, as described in the Gospels

· Jesus really turned water into wine (Pinot Noir?, Cabernet?, Merlot?) at Cana

· Jesus was Crucified by the provincial Roman authorities at the behest of Jewish Temple Priests, as told in the Gospels

· Jesus was actually dead for 2 or 3 days (the Gospels differ on just how long Jesus was dead)

· Jesus then actually came back to life and went on a bit of a “walkabout” and then bodily ascended to “heaven”

Religious believers accept these propositions as factually true in the same sense that most everyone (including religious believers) accepts the propositions listed below as factually true (proposition set #2):

· In 480 B.C.E., a small number of Greek warriors (approx. 5000) led by roughly 300 Spartans held a vastly larger (200,000 +) Persian army at bay for several days in a narrow pass known in antiquity as Thermopylae. This allowed Athenians to evacuate the city before it was burned by the Persian army and was the beginning of a national identity for Greeks and preserved Athenian ideas of democracy so that they survived to provide an ideal for our form of government today

· In 476 C.E., Rome fell

· In 1066, the battle of Hastings was fought in England, clinching the success of the Norman conquest of England, having a major impact on the subsequent history of England

· In 1620, Separatist Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts

· The United States fought a civil war during the period 1860-1864 over ideas of States Rights and slavery

· President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22^nd, 1963

· On September 11^th, 2001 the World Trade Center’s North and South Towers fell, killing 2,603 human beings

If one were to ask someone why they accept the items in proposition set #2 as factually true descriptions of events in human history, their reply would almost certainly entail an appeal to independently verifiable, objective evidence (i.e. archaeological, anthropological, historical, linguistic, etc.) and if they could not do so “off the cuff,” give them a set of encyclopedias and in short order they could look up the relevant information. If you were to ask a religious believer why they accept as factually true descriptions of events in human history the items proposition set #1, the reasons given will be dramatically different from the reasons given for accepting as true the items in proposition set #2.

Another difference between proposition sets 1 and 2 is that the items in set #2 are open to revision in the light of new evidence or information affecting the proposition in question. However, an essential characteristic of the items in proposition set #1 is that their content will never be subject to revision or correction based on new evidence, just ask a believer.

Somehow, despite the evidentiary shortcoming of their propositions, believers demand that we accord the same respect to their beliefs about God and Jesus that we accord to beliefs about the fall of the Roman Empire. I can’t do that. Believers seem unable to distinguish criticisms of the basis for a belief and criticisms of the person holding a belief. If questions are asked that they cannot answer, they get embarrassed and become offended.

Solving common problems in the world requires a common frame of reference, but more than that, the frame of reference must have some minimal correspondence to objective reality. The way the degree to which a proposition (or world view) matches up to reality is to test those propositions using the tools of reason, evidence, and logic.

It is a brute fact that if someone believes that the events in the life of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament are every bit as historically true and reliable as the current accounts of the life of Winston Churchill, there are some very important conversations that will not bear useful fruit.

I am in no way suggesting that laws be passed locking religious believers out of the “public square,” just as there are no laws on the books preventing astrologers from participating in public life. However, believers in astrology, those that consult their horoscopes before making a personal decision of any import, now know, by and large, that many other people consider their beliefs preposterous and it is generally counter productive to bring up one’s devotion to astrological propositions. Taking this analogy a bit further, what would society think if a devoted follower of astrology were assigned to jury duty and announced, unashamedly, that they had cast their ballot in the jury room based on the horoscope of the defendant? Think about that, then explain how it is that asking their fellow jurors to join them in “prayer,” beseeching God for “wisdom” is somehow less irrational than consulting a horoscope rather than just sticking with their own faculty of reason and the evidence presented in court.

Just as those that believe in astrology realize that it would be personally embarrassing to place their beliefs on display during, say, a job interview, it is my hope that religious believers, while they ought to remain free to espouse whatever notions they wish as a matter of principle, like anyone else’s beliefs about astrology, the holocaust, or about a still-living Elvis, that their beliefs be subject to same standards of reasonableness and plausibility as any other notion or claim that people are asked to assent to.

Of course they know, this means WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:54:12 PST

This disturbing photo was taken by an
acquaintance about a week ago. While this is,
of course, a true statement, the disturbing part
is that they seem to think reason is a bad thing.

Opinions, Facts, and How to Tell the Difference

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:40:50 PST

In any kind of rational, informed discourse, especially the kind that is supposed to go on in a democracy or on a college campus, one must be able to distinguish between opinion and fact. In making this distinction, it is vital that the question, what is Truth (big “T”) and what is truth (small “t”) be answered. This is a question that philosophers have been asking since the time of the ancient Greeks. The next question is, is there a difference between Truth (big “T”) and truth (small “t”), and if so what is that difference, followed by; is it important, and if it is, how ought people make the distinction in conversations with others? Some examples may help…

A parent may consider it True (big “T”) that they love their children, but this something they can not prove in an easily verifiable sense. It does not follow that, because they cannot prove that they love their children, that it is equally impossible to prove anything else, like, for instance, that they are in fact, a biological parent of their children. It is quite easy to prove that it is true (small “t”), that they are or are not a biological parent of the children that call them Mom or Dad.

Opinions and facts lie on a continuum of statements or assertions that can be made about the world. Some opinions are entirely subjective and need not be supported by any relevant facts because there are no relevant facts. Other opinions, especially if one wishes them to be respected by others, must be supported by relevant evidence and/or logical argument. Arranged hierarchically these would be:

1. Facts

2. Claims that something about the nature or history of the world/universe is true where the degree to which we accept it as true is determined by the evidence for or against its being true.

3. Opinions that are derived from an interpretation of a line of evidence or argument.

4. Opinions that are a matter of personal taste and so need not be supported by specific facts or arguments.

The best way to illustrate this is through the use of specific examples:

a) As of September 19, 2007, San Francisco Giants left-fielder Barry Bonds has hit 762 career home runs. (http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/bondstracker/bondslog) This is a statement of an empirical fact.

b) The first European settlement in the New World was the Viking colony at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. This is a claim that purports to represent a fact about the Universe and whose truth value is determined by the quality of the evidence in favor of it and whose truth value may be re-evaluated in light of new, additional evidence.

c) The Seattle Seahawks are the greatest team to ever play the game of American football. This is a statement of opinion of the kind where the amount of intellectual respect we will grant it depends critically on the quality of the argument and/or evidence offered in its support.

d) Guinness Stout is better than any mass-produced American beer, with the exception of most Sam Adams varieties. This is a statement of personal preference and thus a purely subjective opinion requiring no defense or argument. (Unless, of course, you get into one of those silly “Tastes Great!” versus “Less Filling!” exchanges.)

The one that seems to give people the most trouble is b). Exactly why this should be is unclear. The example chosen for b) was very deliberately picked because it is not controversial.
It would have been easy enough to choose a controversial example, for instance, any number of religious claims that purport to represent facts about human history in the same sense that it is a fact of human history that in the Second World War the U.S. fought Germany, Italy, and Japan would certainly have stirred the pot.

Many human beings, if questioned in the most polite, respectful manner possible about the factual basis for their favorite truth claims, even those claims, that if true, would have a legitimate effect on public policy, can become very defensive. It is as though they were asked to come to the blackboard and work a problem in front of the class when they had not done their homework.

Americans live in a democracy where they are inculcated with the idea, from an early age, that they have a right to freedom of thought and opinion and that their opinion matters. This is a good thing. It is, nonetheless, an unfortunate fact of the world, especially in this media-centric, information-saturated age that there are far more things about which they might have an opinion than there is time to ensure that the opinion is an informed one. People are reluctant, when asked for their opinion, to admit that they have none. They are essentially embarrassed to admit that as a person whose opinion matters, that in the instance in question, they have no opinion. Extending this idea, when people are asked to elaborate on the factual basis for their most cherished truth claims, which they may not have given much thought to previously, they can become embarrassed and defensive when so questioned.

Thinking human beings have a duty to be intellectually honest about why what they think is so, is actually so. To say that one does not have an opinion on whether or not this or that is true (small “t”) is not something of which one need feel ashamed, it is in fact a courageous and intellectually honest stance to take when their opinion, were they to offer one, would be an uninformed one. Like any habit, the habit of offering up an uninformed opinion when pressured to do so in order to fit in, is a hard one to break. It is usually far more embarrassing in the long run to hold an uninformed opinion and be called on it, than to say when asked, that because they had not given it much thought before, they would prefer to not offer an opinion at that time.

This is something all human beings are prone to so it is important to keep the golden rule in mind. When the facts upon which a favorite belief or opinion is based are discovered to be not as solid as once thought, one should treat others as one would hope to be treated were the roles reversed, because eventually, they will be.